Alice in Wonderland, the 3D experience

I've said it before and I might as well say it now too: I don't think I'll ever find the 3D experience entertaining. True, I have seen very few movies in 3D but I don't think that the pleasure will increase with further viewings. I know a lot of people share my complaint and feel that, in a way, cinema is trying to make them swallow this mind-numbing product, without bothering to give them an actual option; like watching the damn movie without those glasses. It's sort of denying part of our freedom, if you think about it. And it's not doing it in a pretty, subtle way; it's just throwing it in our faces, expecting us to deal with it.
And really now, we will have to deal with it because more and more movies are being shot in 3D. Whether they're doing it to enhance the movie's quality or simply get the extra money on the ticket, this scheme has already run old, before it even reached adulthood.
It's sad to see, in this case, that Tim Burton thinks he needs assistance from the not-so-helping hand of 3D. Knowing him and his creative release in movies, 3D would be too much for the audience to take.
...or at least, it would have been, had he invested more than special effects and a good cast into his new movie, Alice in Wonderland.


Now, before I go any further, I would like to say that I found this movie quite good. I had been waiting for it for ages (last august to be particular) and I was ready to overlook the casting of Johnny Depp (yet again and again and again...), because this was going to be Burton's version on the wonderful, classic tale and Helena-Bonham Carter would have a double-sized head.
The trailers looked fantastic and I was expecting to be dazzled.
Well, I was dazzled...by the number of people who came out of the cinema saying this movie was brilliant.
This movie was fine, no doubt, but, considering the material at hand, quirky Mr. Tim could have done wonders. He had the freedom to do anything and I mean anything and yet the movie looked more like a clean-cut zoo. Maybe the problem was that he had too much freedom and he didn't know how to use it. But the fact of the matter remains; he limited himself to action scenes, some amazing visuals and teen-psychology (which was well-handled, I'll admit).

I guess the problem came with the script, written by Beauty and the Beast veteran, Linda Woolverton, who probably had something else in mind when she handed her written work to Burton. It seems to me and this is a personal opinion, that her view and his clashed on a couple of aspects. Burton tried to make the story look like Alice's dream in which Alice was painfully aware this could be a hallucination and this worked brilliantly for the first half of the movie. However, Linda wanted to make this world real, but not in the sense that Caroll probably intended, satirizing the boorish and absurd English society (it was more a satire of some fascist regimes, but not of England that much). More likely, she wanted "Underland" to be the opposite of reality, in that in Underland, Alice would finally live free to dream and be herself, implying that she couldn't have done that in her own world. She expects Alice to go through this rite of passage in which she becomes a woman, but I think she underlines that this new maturity needs to be applied in her real world, because once she grows up, she doesn't need Underland anymore.
So, in a way, Underland is just the waiting room for real life and while this idea is fairly interesting, it was not fleshed out that well and Burton would have been better off with his initial take on the story.
The acting in this movie is sometimes beautiful and sometimes just downright subpar. We have a studded cast here that's just exuding potential, but when we do get to see them performing our balloon starts to deflate slowly.
The man who should have refused this part was Johnny Depp. No matter how good an actor he might be, this particular character was so painfully reminiscent of all his other performances that we didn't really care about The Mad Hatter; we just saw Depp trying to be Depp. And when you can see that in an actor, you know the acting will suffer. He did try his best, I will say that, but his attempts were ousted by his constant care to remain in character. I really liked some of his scenes, but at the same time almost choked on my popcorn at others. That's right; the Godawful break-dance scene at the end of the movie. Depp should have said no to that, at least, but I guess he is really committed.
Another Burton favourite, Helena-Bonham Carter gave a pretty solid performance, but once again, we were painfully reminded of a dozens other characters she embodied in movies. We saw something interesting, but not something new. She seemed to be replaying every other part she's ever had, or at least that's how it felt. But she did give a lot of colour and dynamics to the movie and saved a lot of awkward scenes.
The fairly new-comer, Mia Wasikowska, gave a truly brilliant performance. I was really impressed by this girls' acting skills and the way she could portray a very fragile, innocent girl one minute and the next, turn into a headstrong, powerful woman who could slay monsters. I felt what she felt, I could actually understand her and sympathize and she had this humanity that went beyond the screen. Of course, the script cut off her potential in many scenes, like the ones in the beginning of the movie. The exposition was rushed and silly, trying to explain everything in two minutes and failing to give any outline to the heroine. But that was easily fixed when she entered Underland.
Other brilliant performances belonged to Anne Hathaway( who, despite what others might say, was a heck of a White Queen) and of course Stephen Fry and Alan Rickman (adoring sigh).
The Chesshire Cat and Absolem were, by far, the most entertaining characters of the "wild" bunch. Crispin Glover was not bad as the Knave of Hearts, but at times Helena seemed a lot manlier than him, even Mia perhaps. And if he was stuck being a wimp, we'd expect him to show his oddball side he interprets so well, but that didn't happen either. He was uncommonly bland for two hours.
The March Hare and the Dormouse were awfully annoying and unnecessary, especially when they tried to seem eccentric and "crazy". They looked like they needed direction and maybe some decent lines.

Now that we've covered story and acting, we're left with visuals which were impressive of course and breathtaking in some scenes. My only complaint remains that Tim Burton didn't let himself go. I barely saw this world come to life. It didn't have a mind of its own. The scenes that were truly beautiful distracted me from noticing everything was far too normal, but in the long run, I realised what was missing. The 3D was better used here than in Avatar, but it didn't make some scenes more entrancing or more creative, it just made them more exciting perhaps.
In conclusion, I would sum up Alice in Wonderland as a box-office movie. It gets the money, it makes people happy and it leaves you with an impression. Too bad that the dancing sequence at the end almost threatened to destroy that impression for me.