Good movie...if it wasn't for Disney

Rating: 6/10 (21 September 2010)

At first, I didn't even know that this was a different plot to most Alice in Wonderland films, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was a fresh take on the old classic. Initially, I wasn't sure it would be much, due to the appalling quality of films made in recent years. The film starts off quite slowly, with very little happening in the opening few minutes, and what does happen is entirely irrelevant to the plot. Once Alice finds her way down the rabbit hole, things start to get going. I enjoyed the dark atmosphere, being quite Harry-Potteresque at times. I liked the CG effects, with many of the characters either lovable or reflecting their actor's appearance while maintaining the fantasy element. This film's triumph though, it its casting. Helena Bonham-Carter makes for a superb Red Queen, and is by far the most amusing character in the entire film. Johnny Depp, who I regard as the only good American actor apart from John Malkovich, is also very good as the Mad Hatter, possessing yet another virtually flawless accent. Matt Lucas was a surprise for me, but I felt that he was an excellent choice as Tweedledum and Tweedledee, bringing just the right naivety to them.
The film runs very smoothly for most of the beginning and middle parts, with some features that I thought would never make it into a Disney film. Sadly though, things take a turn for the worse when the climax of the film comes around. The battle scene is very mundane, predictable and just didn't grip me at all. I'm reminded strongly of the battle with the Basilisk in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, except that scene is now 8 years old and puts the fight with the Jabberwocky to shame. The CG effects in 2010 look rather pitiful in comparison to those in 2002. The Basilisk looked so much more believable, not to mention the entire scene was more suspenseful, despite the fact I already knew the outcome of it from reading the book.
But the battle scene is nothing compared to just a few seconds of insanity that follow it. Johnny Depp's dance can only be described as a brain explosion on the part of the writers. I simply sat, staring at the screen, my only thought being "what were they thinking?!". It is truly one of the worst moments in any film, something that doesn't fit in with the rest of the film at all. Not even the music fits in with the Victorian setting of the movie. Johnny Depp should be ashamed of the brief seconds he spent dancing in this abomination of an ending. Speaking of which, I have seen many a cringe-worthy ending of American films in my time, but none as ludicrous or inconsequential as this. It is as if there were two sets of writers for this film. One for the middle, and one for the beginning an end. The two sections seem to bare no resemblance to one another, and may as well be from different films.
In my opinion, this film was gunning for an 8 out of 10, if it wasn't for the final few minutes which went from bland to inexplicable. It begs the question, did Tim Burton have anything to do with this excruciating ending? Or did Disney take over when it was nearly finished, and attempted to tie any hint of a loose end up and turn this once promising film into another piece of Hollywood tripe to be thrown onto the dung-heap that constitutes the majority of American cinema.