Alice in Wonderland (2010)

[Anthony G Williams]

I hadn't seen Tim Burton's version of Alice in Wonderland before and knew little about it: I was surprised to read that it is one of the highest grossing films of all time, earning around $1 billion at the box office (five or six times what it cost to make). Although I was of course familiar with the book as a child I hadn't read it since then so, although I recalled odd details, I didn't know what to expect, except a lot of nonsense! I read through the Wiki summaries afterwards to see how the plots compared.

The first point is that the film is not simply an adaptation of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, but takes elements from the sequel (Through the Looking-Glass) plus adds some original ones and spins a rather more coherent story around the mix. While the result still contains a lot of surreal nonsense – I wasn't disappointed in that respect – it makes for a reasonably understandable tale. The acting is good with some well-known names (Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Anne Hathaway to name but a few) and the film is visually very rich and appealing. Not really my cup of tea, but entertaining enough to be worth watching.

(An extract from my SFF blog: Science Fiction & Fantasy)

 

[Toby Frost]

I didn't mind this, but I wasn't expecting great things. It was pretty typical Burton/Depp fare, with Johnny Depp capering round the screen being captivating or a nuisance as you see fit. I think its success depends to a fair extent on how much Depp (and to a lesser extent Bonham Carter as the Queen from Blackadder) you can take. My tolerance is fairly low.

I was particularly disappointed, though, with the need to turn the story into a standard sub-LOTR goodies-vs-baddies tale, with the inevitable huge CGI battle at the end. The books are cleverer than that. Also, the concept of evil falling across the land meant that much of it was just a burned-out ruin, and so the originality of the designs was limited in parts.

I suppose there are things to be thankful for. A lot of the minor characters were well-realised. The film resisted the urge to "go dark" and turn the whole thing goffik (again, the books are much cleverer than this, despite all the mention of decapitation). The decision to make Alice older was good, as she really is the voice of reason, but I found the prophesy of her return to be straight out of the "old fantasy tropes" box.

Overall, I wasn't expecting wonders, and it would get a reasonable 6.5 out of 10 from me.