garlonuss

It's not highly likely to win many new converts, but for those who already like the original and want to see more of that world, it more than satisfies. The visuals are a wonderful evolution from Tron and the story of a father and son who have to make up for lost time is very touching. The CGI face they developed for Jeff Bridges is not perfect, but it works very well with just a few exceptions and I feel, for my own tastes, that they have actually bridged the uncanny valley with this one. Still a bit of work to get it perfect, but this one works as it is. Oh, and the score by Daft Punk is beautiful. The first thing my brother and I did after leaving the theater was buy the sound track on the way home. It's very suggestive of the original but with plenty of today's newer sensibilities mixed in.

It's definitely one of the more commercially marketable Tim Burton movies, which may be a result of doing it with Disney. But there are a few little drawbacks for me. I like Mia Wasikowska as Alice in general, but there are a few times when she didn't seem to be emoting quite enough. She seems to act out the gravity of her situation well enough, in general, but, for instance, in the scene where she finds the small door and keeps getting big and small until she can get through the door, it simply felt like she was doing the actions because the script told her to. I may have been expecting too much, but it seemed like she was just going through the steps.

Also, the 3D aspect feels a bit inconsistent. At times, there are some nicely impressive shots, but at other times it doesn't seem all that different from a 2D film. I had heard that Tim Burton shot the film with a standard camera and then had the footage processed into 3D (sort of like what they did with the Nightmare Before Christmas 3D) so that may have made me more critical when I watched it and maybe I'm being a bit too harsh, but there it is.

Other than those issues, the visual aspect of the movie is actually quite creative, inventive, ... um ... made-up-I've, and ... Tim-Burton-I've. Don't expect the original Alice story. (Either one, since many people are content to forget that the Tweedles are actually from "Through the Looking-Glass", not "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland".) Tim Burton has restructured the story since he felt--and rightly so--that Alice's stories are more a series of short encounters rather than one overarching story. The restructured story now ties it all into one meaningful adventure, and I think it works quite well.

On the whole, not my favorite Burton, but it's a good movie and I feel comfortable recommending it. (Though unless you feel you really have to see it in 3D, you should probably save your money and see the 2D version as it doesn't really take full advantage of the possibilities of the 3D format.)

This is a rather intriguing movie. You truly have to watch it at least twice to really begin to pick up on much of what is happening. The second time you watch it, you see several things in a completely new light. The technical discussions are very realistic (within a sci-fi framework) and the movie feels quite familiar (up until it starts to get quite confusing).

At first, you may begin to think that, with the amount of layered talking, it may be a heady drama. But that talking simply makes the scientific exploration of the movie more realistic. The engineering terms are not dumbed-down or explained, but it's not important for you to fully understand it all. The parts you really need to know are the parts that the main characters discover along the way, and they are explained adequately.

Personally, I loved it.