One Word Summary: lolwut?

Rating: 6/10 (22 March 2010)

This movie just left a bad taste in my mouth. It had a great deal of potential, what with gorgeous sets and gorgeous and talented stars, but it didn't do much with them. The acting was generally quite good, as befits the aforementioned gorgeous stars, but the lines the actors were speaking were generally average, occasionally just trite and lame.
The writing was nothing surprising. Every single line was formulaic, from Alice's predictably whimsical musings about flying to the Hatter's tritely "meaningful" repetitions, to the reoccurring admonitions that one need only "believe." Seriously, Disney. You've worn these tropes pretty thin over the years.
Howabout an utterly non-whimsical female lead, or a kooky mentor who encourages the hero to -dis-believe? Shake up the formula just a little, pretty please? Let me qualify my statements. This movie is by no means terrible, though it is terribly average. This movie's sin is not proactive horribleness, but rather passive mediocrity. All the usual characters and set pieces are right where we expect them, nothing to surprise us anywhere (not even the rather out of place dance at the end).
The "lolwut" in the title is what kept popping in my head as I saw one well-tread cliché after another break dance across the screen. What indeed. With all this potential squandered on mediocrity, I could not fully enjoy even the otherwise fun story. Bad taste in mouth.