Not a Disappointment Burton's Best or most Imaginative

Rating: 6/10 (3 April 2010)

I liked the character of Alice. She was a very interesting character and did really seem more like Alice when watching the film than she did when viewing the trailer. The red Queen also seemed very much queen like.
Other characters felt either empty or not as interesting or right to me. Something about the Cheshire cat just didn't seem quite right, and it was weird as they all ended up having names. Also, characters (such as the white queen) seem to appear to have some form of personality, but just don't seem real or full which wouldn't be a problem if it was the original story of Alice in Wonderland but Burton tries to turn everyone into more believable characters and it didn't work too well in some cases. Not a total disaster, the Mad Hatter turned into more than just a raving lunatic obsessed with tea.
Burton almost seems to give a sense of order and logic to wonderland. It's weird seeing a Tim Burton film that seems to be trying to be NORMAL instead of weird! Wonderland becomes a linear and ordered place where you can go from one spot to another with no trouble of things changing dramatically or getting lost if you turn around. It lacks the imagination and surrealist absurdity of Alice in Wonderland that it should. It starts off the same as the original and then diverges quite drastically.
But it's not a failure of a film. It still had an interesting plot, a few laughs and some imagination. It's still entertaining to watch and visually was quite vivid and interesting. The CGI was not groundbreaking, but it had style. I liked the specific look that they went for and it didn't look camp or unrealistic (well yes, unrealistic as it's wonderland, but you don't go "that's just stupid"). The ending was happy. It was good. But Burton really didn't hit the mark on this one like his previous films.