Is Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland really that awful?

[bartholen_v1legacy]

Since Nostalgia Critic's latest video was a review of it and I saw it get quite a kicking when it first came out, I have to ask out of honest curiosity since I haven't seen it: is it really that bad?

NC certainly manages to make it look so. Some of the dialogue he showed in the review seemed only to confirm my worst suspicions about Burton: that he's indulgent, pretentious and just makes the same movie pandering to the same demographic over and over again. His newest film which I've seen was Sweeney Todd, which was okay I guess. But when I saw the posters for Dark Shadows and Frankenweenie, on both occasions I thought "great, another Tim Burton movie, not again!" Mind you, I've seen neither of them, but the posters just sreamed "I PANDER TO ARTISTIC GOTH TEENS WHO DON'T WANT TO FIT INTO THE NORM! LOOK AT ME I'M SO DIFFERENT AND ARTSY! LOOK I MADE ANOTHER MOVIE WITH A GOTHIC AESTHETIC BUT IT'S KIND OF WHACKY AND RANDOM CAUSE I'M SO DIFFERENT AND OH LOOK THERE'S BLOOD SPLATTER HERE CAUSE ITS DARK YOU KNOW!"

I want to be clear: I'm not trying to hate on Tim Burton. Hell, I've only seen around 4-5 of his movies, and I'm sure he's made great films in the past. It just puzzles me that someone who's practically made a trademark of his personality as a strange, nonconformist artist has become such a punching bag for repeating himself so much.

Got a little side tracked there. The original question still remains: Is Alice in Wonderland (2010) really that bad? Because I actually started to get interested in it, if only to see if it really is.

 

[EeveeElectro]

Take my opinion with a grain of salt because I looooooooove Tim Burton (yes I was one of those artistic goth kids at one point) I just love his style. It's similar in a lot of his movies but they all tell different stories and are pretty good solid good movies IMO.

I thought Alice in Wonderland was good. Not great or fantastic and a bit of a let down but I did enjoy it. Some of the dialogue was cringey and the actress who played Alice was pretty terrible :/
It was a visually beautiful movie though, I just enjoyed looking at the scenery. (And DEM DRESSES! <333 ARRG)

 

[Eclipse Dragon]

As you already know Tim Burton has his own style and Alice in Wonderland makes absolutely no effort what so ever to break away from that mold. There are many people who are getting sick of it, just as they're getting sick of seeing Johnny Depp dress up in flamboyant costumes. The movie is also very very CGI heavy, so people who don't care for that may be turned off.

My personal opinion of the film? It's Alice in Wonderland, it has the cheshire cat, the mad hatter, the queen, the whimsy, it's all there, just with Tim Burton's style on it. Although I liked the Jabberwocky (not for accurate representation because it's far from it but...)

Spoiler

Because it was more or less a dragon

For what it's worth, I enjoyed Frankeweenie a lot more than I did Alice in Wonderland, but I like Tim Burton's animated stuff more than his "live action" stuff. If you want a film though that represents what Tim Burton can really do well, before he became known for his "style" watch Big Fish, it's a good movie. I refuse to watch Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

The dude IMO needs to take a step back and look at his work and figure out where to go next, before people move on once and for all to the next big thing. A luxury he probably hasn't afforded himself since the days in which Disney wrote him the nicest rejection letter in history. [http://news.moviefone.com/2011/02/24/tim-burton-disney-rejection-letter/]

At this point he feels a little bit like one of those singers who sings nothing but songs people have already sung before, but in their own weird way.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I didn't like the movie at all. He turned a strange, nonsensical, wonderfully mysterious world into... Narnia. The story of the good guys ganging up on an Evil Queen once the Chosen One shows up. What a fucking bore.

I used to be a big Burton fan. I liked Beetlejuice, the first couple of Batman movies, I love Ed Wood, Sleepy Hollow and Big Fish. But I don't think he's half as wonderful or interesting as his style or image might suggest. I don't think he usually commits all that much to his stories or his characters. A set decorator is what he is these days.

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

Take my opinion with a grain of salt because I looooooooove Tim Burton (yes I was one of those artistic goth kids at one point) I just love his style. It's similar in a lot of his movies but they all tell different stories and are pretty good solid good movies IMO.

I thought Alice in Wonderland was good. Not great or fantastic and a bit of a let down but I did enjoy it. Some of the dialogue was cringey and the actress who played Alice was pretty terrible :/
It was a visually beautiful movie though, I just enjoyed looking at the scenery. (And DEM DRESSES! <333 ARRG)

Pretty much how my Sister looks at it. Not the best of Burton and Depp but still Burton and Depp.

OT: I thought it was okay? Not terrible, not amazing. I thought some of the decisions were creative alright but I'd rather just watch Sweeney Todd again if I want my fill of Burton and Depp.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Yes it is.

As in 'a soulless assembly line production'.

The moment I saw Alice's husband-to-be presented as this overly snobbish dimwit that we're supposed to hate left, right, and center because he's part of the "establishment", I nearly got sick to my stomach. This isn't the 90's anymore, Burton. Knock that shit off!

The CGI is godawful, even managing to infiltrate Crispin Glover. It's made needlessly epic cuz Lord of the Rings. Helena Bonham Carter is it, because nobody except Tim Burton likes her. And Johnny Depp.... Oy! I never thought one of my favourite actors ever could become such a fucking plague on the world of cinema. Pirates of the Caribbean poisoned him for life. Thanks, Verbinski!

 

[Mathak]

There should be a law against casting Christopher Lee in a movie and then giving him all of 3 lines.

Other than that...it's a standard-template Burton movie. If you haven't gotten tired of those yet you'll enjoy it.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

Yes it is.

As in 'a soulless assembly line production'.

The moment I saw Alice's husband-to-be presented as this overly snobbish dimwit that we're supposed to hate left, right, and center because he's part of the "establishment", I nearly got sick to my stomach. This isn't the 90's anymore, Burton. Knock that shit off!

The CGI is godawful, even managing to infiltrate Crispin Glover. It's made needlessly epic cuz Lord of the Rings. Helena Bonham Carter is it, because nobody except Tim Burton likes her. And Johnny Depp.... Oy! I never thought one of my favourite actors ever could become such a fucking plague on the world of cinema. Pirates of the Caribbean poisoned him for life. Thanks, Verbinski!

Ugh, you obviously don't get it. You see, the husband is part of the SYSTEM! And Alice is an ADUUUUULT! She doesn't CONFORM! She's DIFFERENT! She likes to THINK of FLYING and stuff! You can't trust the SYSTEM, MAAAAN!

 

[Angelous Wang]

I really like Gothic style. So I tend to watch Tim Burton works blind to the actual movie that's going on just watching the prettiness.

Hell I've watched Sweeney Todd at least 3 times (on very low volume), and I fucking hate musicals.

 

[Silvanus]

It's just a pretty uninteresting film. Not awful, but predictable, and not worth much thought.

The biggest crime, to me, was to take Alice's Adventures in Wonderland as source material and use it to create.... An utterly traditional, predictable story. Protagonist goes on quest, overcomes some uncompelling adversity, and defeats the baddy.

What made the book interesting was that it wasn't like that. It was random, unpredictable, whimsical, and mostly directionless. This film is not in that spirit. It is just another fantasy quest, and there's not really any reason for it to be Alice in Wonderland themed.

 

[Uhura]

I remember hating it when I saw it and according to IMDb I gave it 3/10 stars. Out of all the Burton movies I've seen, it's definitely one of his weakest offerings. I can't remember the movie that clearly anymore, but I do remember thinking the movie just felt... awkward. And soulless. All the visuals were there but the movie itself was empty. Which was disappointing, since Tim Burton was one of my favorite directors during my teens. I don't really follow his work anymore.

Mind you, I've seen neither of them, but the posters just sreamed "I PANDER TO ARTISTIC GOTH TEENS WHO DON'T WANT TO FIT INTO THE NORM! LOOK AT ME I'M SO DIFFERENT AND ARTSY! LOOK I MADE ANOTHER MOVIE WITH A GOTHIC AESTHETIC BUT IT'S KIND OF WHACKY AND RANDOM CAUSE I'M SO DIFFERENT AND OH LOOK THERE'S BLOOD SPLATTER HERE CAUSE ITS DARK YOU KNOW!"

Hmm, I wouldn't ascribe that kind of "teenage angst"/"special snowflake syndrome" to Tim Burton. He is an adult man, who has worked in the industry for many years. I think it's a bit too much to assume that he suffers from arrested development and processes his art and his personality like some 16 year old kid.

 

[Little Woodsman]

Well when you ask if something is 'good' or 'bad' most of us will only be able to tell you whether we liked it or not, and why we did/didn't.
For myself I liked the fact that it was referencing/drawing inspiration from lots of Sandman, in particular the A Game of You story line from Sandman which in turn was heavily referencing/inspired by the original Amythest; Princess of Gemworld comic, which in turn was heavily influenced by older girl-goes-to-another-world works including Alice in Wonderland. So that was kind of neat.
And--Anne Hathaway. Not only was she even more gorgeous than usual in the getup Burton had her wearing for the film but she nailed the role of a 'fairy queen', so I loved her parts.
Also I haven't seen much of Tim Burton's work (hadn't even seen Nightmare Before Christmas at that point) so I wasn't sick of his style yet.
All that being said-- I can really see why most people would not enjoy the film much at all. It's all over the place, many bits just don't make sense and even enjoying the parts that I did I found other parts of it tedious.
MovieBob has a review of it in his Escape to the Movies feature here on the Escapist, and he's pretty good at explaining why movies work (or don't) on a more objective level so you might want to check that out.

 

[lord canti]

Like NC said it's not only a bad movie because it's just boring it's a bad movie because it completely misses the point of Alice in wonderland.

 

[Fox12]

Everything Tim Burton makes is bad. Even if it's good.

Most of his classic films (nightmare for Christmas) weren't even made by him. In any case, it's just another tired re-imagining of Alice in Wonderland, a story that's been re-imagined a hundred times too many. Basically they just took Alice in Wonderland and made it into Lord of the Rings. The problem is that it end up not being Alice in Wonderland, and it's not as good as Lord of the Rings. It's not the worst film ever made, but it's not really worth your time either.

Also, they replaced Alice with Luna Lovegood, an idea that sounds amazing on paper but didn't really work out in practice.

 

[Fiz_The_Toaster]

I remember hating it when I saw it and according to IMDb I gave it 3/10 stars. Out of all the Burton movies I've seen, it's definitely one of his weakest offerings. I can't remember the movie that clearly anymore, but I do remember thinking the movie just felt... awkward. And soulless. All the visuals were there but the movie itself was empty. Which was disappointing, since Tim Burton was one of my favorite directors during my teens. I don't really follow his work anymore.

Yeah, it felt super soulless. It felt very much paint by numbers for a Tim Burton movie, and that's disappointing because I love his stuff. That movie soured anything he did afterwards for me. I did enjoy some of the visuals, and Anne Hathaway was awesome in it because Anne Hathaway. The rest of the acting sucked though.

Normally he does neat little things to source material and that didn't happen.

He also needs to stop using Johnny Depp for bloody everything.

 

[geK0]

I enjoyed it, but then again I'm not the cynical pretentious type when it comes to movies. If people's main complaint is that it uses the typical Tim Burton dark but cartoony aesthetic then I guess their criticism is spot on; I for one don't get the same knee-jerk reaction to Tim Burton films, and no, I'm not one of those "artsy goth types". It's a more adult spin on Alice and Wonderland, It has a bit of decent action, a surreal style and an okay story. Overall it's kind of "meh" for me, but a lot of people will look at a "meh" sort of film and start fuming with rage : \

I'm not sure why so many people expect more than "meh" from a high budget, special effects heavy popcorn seller like this one....

TLDR

It's not THAT bad.

 

[MrBaskerville]

I thought it was decent enough, but probably one the weakest Burton movies. It's a bit clunky and turns into a bland "chosen one" story near the end, but it does have its inspired moments. I liked the chessire cat and the castle segment was pretty enjoyable, but as a whole it's a bit uneven and not particularily inspired.

 

[Eldritch Warlord]

I rather enjoyed it.

You can look on Metacritic and see that the movie actually wasn't regarded as awful by critics, the reception was extremely mixed. I don't think I've ever seen anything with review scores so evenly distributed over so wide a range.

 

[Pierre Poutine]

Alice in Wonderland is the most disappointed I've ever been in a movie.
I love Tim Burton [I even liked Charlie and the Chocolate Factory], Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Alan Rickman. I also really love the original animated version of Alice in Wonderland. It even has the advantage of not strictly adhering to the source material, so if some parts don't translate to film as well, it's not as big a deal. Yet, nothing about his version of Alice worked for me, and it's been really hard to nail down why. NC touches on some reasons, but I think it is just that it's this weird combination of the fantastical with the hard-boiled genre that doesn't work. Even the visuals, which is what Burton excels at are dark and uninviting. All those good actors turn in surprisingly boring performances, and it's just such an odd decision to make it appear to be the same story when it really isn't.

 

[[Kira Must Die]]

I absolutely hated it. While I never read the original story, and I've seen enough adaptations to know the story and appreciate it for what it's suppose to be, and the animated film is one of my favorite Disney movies. I thought this went against everything the original story is, and even taking the original story out of it, I thought it was a poorly done, forgettable fantasy war film. It was just a pain for me to sit through, I was cringing throughout it, and I really couldn't stand the main actress. As NC put it, they're trying to put logic into a story that never had nor needed it because that wasn't the kind of story it was, and it ends up really hurting the film. I like Tim Burton alright, I've enjoyed a number of his films, but that one I couldn't stand. I honestly have difficulty understanding how people could actually like it.