barbicaned

Why a terrific creative mind just "decided" to sell his entire career to the worst company in entertainment?

The "original" animated movie wwas a masterpiece that once in a while appeared in my dreams, that remarkable was that work. This is just a flamboyant waste of time (our) and resources (theirs).

For starters, the one that suggested Mia Wasikowska as Alice "_Off with his/her head!!!". I'm still waiting to see her doing something else than looking pretty.

Some blame the writing but I don't think that's the problem, in fact there are very memorable lines; the problems really is the lack of fluidity on dialogs and along the whole movie which is plagued with dead time holes. I understand it's a child's movie (at times it seems they forgot that and took very dark decisions) with so much to see and assimilate but, even so, the result is too slow and arrhythmic.

Apart from the wrong Alice choice, the other faults were, terrible CGI on some characters and photography, over dramatic music at times and the worst "dance" scene in cinema history (anti-climatic, out of period, horrible CGI, destruction of character, everything is wrong in that scene).

The rest of the cast is very ok, even Anne Hathaway which I usually don't like, here she's purposely over acting some sort of "lightness" which results hilarious. Bonham Carter and Depp are great even suffering too much CGI meddling; poor Crispin Glover didn't had that luck, nor Matt Lucas.

Another terrible choice was the end titles song by Alanis Morrisette which had nothing to made a connection to to the film.

To finish, the actual darkness on some parts of the film is annoying, looks like if they decided to make a bright, colorful movie and then put dark sunglasses on it.

Why Tim? Why?

Starting as a comedy with touchs of drama in a very dramatic situation then telling almost every character story through an excellent writting with plot twists and revelations in every episode to an unexpectedly funny AND heartbreaking end (how can they make us cry and laugh at the same time?), an amazing work. The incredible Toshiyuki Nishida (the father) again delivering an extraordinary performance again by the side of the almost unrecognisable Tomoya Nagase, they worked together in "Tiger & Dragon" and "Unubore deka" (imo, a handsome man some years ago, here with an almost different face, plus an also purposefully unflattering haircu :); all in favor of his character of course). A great performance by Noriko Eguchi (Mai, the daughter/sister) and Kenta Kiritani (Jugemu, another son/brother) who also was in Tiger & Dragon and a hilarious appeareance by Sadao Abe (the lead on the great "Extremelly inappropriate!") from Tiger & Dragon aswell.

The father being a noh master is a perfect excuse to let us learn a little bit about that art form and mirror some of its ancient stories in the current plot, a resource also used, though more evident, in Tiger & Dragon.

An extremelly fun and touching work.