A Long, Dull Slog Through Blunderland

Rating: 2/10 (25 June 2010)

Oh boy did I hate this movie. It's a disastrous, arrogant mess and waste of everyone's time, whose budget could have fed the starving children of several small impoverished nations for a year. Absolutely everything about it is wrong. The plot less screenplay is a hash of preening ain't I clever? Cliff's Notes references to the original materials, a travesty of Carroll and an insult to anyone who appreciates his work. The half-baked references to Wonderland and Underland and Frabjous Day and the Jabberwocky and all that are embarrassingly lame. By the time it all devolved into just another idiotic fight scene -- followed by an appalling break-dance scene! -- I was shouting at the screen. The girl who plays Alice is very pretty, but a dull, monotone, non-acting cipher about whom it is impossible to care. The stars surrounding her try their best, but except for Ann Hathaway in a light, deft humorously turn, they all fail. The billion dollars' worth of 3D CGI mostly looks awful -- dark, jumbled, ugly. And, at this point in Burton's career, really old hat. We've seen all this a dozen times before, going back as far as Beetlejuice. It's not Wonderland, it's just another sojourn in Burtonland. The whole exercise is a lugubrious, leaden, foolish, ill-conceived and exhausting slog. I left it as angry and disappointed as I did Terry Gilliam's similarly half-baked and overwrought mess Dr. Parnassus. I'm still a fan of Burton's earlier films, but the last decade or so he's made one wrong turn after another.