When I first found out that Tim Burton was making “Alice in Wonderland,” it didn’t come as much of a surprise. Burton has a knack for taking supremely dark and surreal children’s stories and applying his own quirky and unique vision to them. Adopting “Alice in Wonderland” as his own made perfect sense. As I wasn’t necessarily blown away by “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” I was hoping this new endeavor would be a sort of comeback, a success equal to the likes of “Sleepy Hollow”, which I believe to be Burton’s best interpretation of a children’s story. 
Well, “Alice in Wonderland” is all right. The main thing that seemed to be glaring me in the face the entire time was how rushed it seemed. Now I know Burton’s idea was to make Alice herself feel like the story, instead of the movie just bouncing from one strange circumstance to another. He wanted a decisive plot and all of the familiar faces like the Cheshire Cat and the Blue Caterpillar to simply fall in line with the story. However, I feel Burton’s changes in that regard may have had the opposite effect of what he was originally hoping to achieve. The movie plows full force ahead, without much down time to learn about the characters and even Wonderland itself. The opening sequence with Alice before she falls down the rabbit hole is probably my favorite part, because it’s decidedly more gradual than the rest of the movie. Once she’s in Wonderland though, all bets are off. Alice is thrust forward into a maze of scenarios that seem to have been given little thought and development. Johnny Depp is wacky as usual, but even his character falls flat and then only resurfaces from time to time to make us “laugh.” Which leads to another problem, the wit. Tim Burton’s concoctions usually have a lot, but here there isn’t much in the way of humor, except obvious things — such as the size of the Red Queen’s head. 
The effects are not much to comment on either and I wondered to myself if the movie would have looked better had I seen it in 3-D, although I’ve received some feedback saying it doesn’t seem to make much of a difference. Something that did surprise me though was Anne Hathaway. Her character was interesting enough, with a few delightful quirks. It was also nice to see Crispin Glover in person instead of just hearing his voice, as that’s pretty much all we get from him these days.  So, the movie barrels from one thing to another until it’s reached the end and the final battle sequence which leaves one going, “Well, okay…” So, all in all, that’s the taste we’re pretty much left with. An okay movie, significantly less than what I was expecting. I wanted to love it, but 2010 has thrown me yet another film that I kind of wish I would not have seen in the first place so I could just hold onto naïve anticipation instead. 

Grade: B- 
(A generous rating, mainly due to the fact that even if the movie didn’t meet my expectations, I still love Tim Burton dearly and will just have to look forward to what he does next.)

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