Boring

Rating: 4/10 (18 October 2010)

Just saw this one finally, wasn't too impressed. Of course everybody here on IMDb except Burton fans said it was terrible, and the Burton fans said "best movie yet." Of course. So I can't really go off that. I just have to eventually see the movie because I have some faith in Burton. I thought he was really going downhill in the late 90s when he did "Sleepy Hollow" and the horrendous "Planet of the Apes", so I didn't see "Big Fish" until years later. Then when I saw it, I realized how stupid I was to give up on Burton because all in all it's a wonderful movie, just as good as his early films. So then my faith in him is totally restored, I'm beating myself up for having so little patience to give up on a director I know is kind of special just because he did one mediocre movie and one horrible movie, so I start seeing his movies again. And since then, only "Sweeney Todd" was really worth seeing, and that was just barely worth seeing.
So I'm thinking about giving up on him again.
Oh, not a horrible movie like "Planet of the Apes" -- that would almost give me hope that there could be another breakthrough on the horizon. If anything, Burton must have realized that he screwed up with that movie and he went and did a more interesting project. But if he keeps making really average movies like "Alice" and "Wonka" and the audience keeps going, then he's got no incentive to improve.
The movie is just sort of there in front of you. There are too many precious scenes, too much intricate scenery that doesn't add up to a pleasing whole. You sit there looking at the details like the little nuances of Johnny Depp's weird costume and you end up not seeing half the movie. Tim Burton's action scenes have never seemed all that great to me. And that poor actress, he really leaned on her a lot and didn't protect her. It would have been a miracle if she had actually pulled it off. Crispin Glover, I thought at least he would be really good or really bad, but I'm indifferent to his performance here. It's not funny and it's not scary but it's not annoying. Depp has a few nice moments. At least his character here is more likable than in the Wonka movie. Although at some point I'd like to see Depp play a character for Burton who's not an eccentric. Make a movie where all the characters are weird but Johnny Depp is normal. Now that would be something different for Burton. This is just more of the same. He got the best performance out of his wife Bonham-Carter, although there were so many effects that it's difficult to say what's really her.
There is no summing it up. The movie ends (SPOILERS) with a big, not particularly interesting, battle. And then Johnny Depp does an awful dance to the worst song Danny Elfman has written since he was in Oingo Boingo. There were a lot of things in the movie like that which were obviously supposed to be funny but my gal and I were at best amused, not ever laughing. I think I chuckled one time at the Red Queen slapping Crispin Glover around, but that's pretty pathetic laugh-o-meter for a movie that was at least supposed to be 30% comedy. I kept thinking how Terry Gilliam made a funnier movie with a scarier Jabberwocky for like fifty bucks back in the 70s. Everything in this movie is basically you're looking at things happening, you never really feel caught up in it or like there's any real danger. The movie finally ends with a bunch of obligatory women's-lib-in-19th Century nonsense to wrap up the framing device which apparently we're also supposed to care about, and then probably the worst pop song I've heard in a decade comes on the soundtrack. "You can't make me stop" she's singing, or something like that. Oh it's as easy at home as pressing a button, but I guess in the theater these function to empty the room so the ushers can sweep up the popcorn and get ready for another bunch of suckers.