It it live, or is it Burton-ex?

Rating: 4/10 (22 March 2017)

The trouble with many of the spectaculars today is that you can't tell if the actors are real, made up to look freakish, or some cartoon with just a voice attached. Modern computer generated special effects were a novelty when they were first making these, but now it's an attraction that often seems closer to "Ice Age" than real live action. Subtle use of this form of special effects made many of Tim Burton's earlier works, but I had a hard time really becoming engaged in this "Alice in Wonderland", feeling I had fallen into the rabbit hole myself and o.d.'d on a dinosaur size order of magic mushrooms.
With many famous faces (obviously many of them Burton regulars), this is going to be artistically beautiful to look at, but difficult to become totally engaged with. First of all, you've got an overaged Alice (Mia Wasikowska) who seems like a college student playing dress up, a slam towards Lewis J. Carroll's conception of the lost little girl.
The performances of the characters of wonderland are basically extended cameos. Helena Bonham Carter tries for camp and ends up a screeching shrew whose Stewie Griffin like head I wanted to see explode. Johnny Depp, for once, seems to be just an amalgamation of every Burton character he's played, not a bad thing, but basically a performance that he basically texts in. It's nice to look at like a fancy drawing at a museum but after five minutes, it's time to move on.