OH THE HORROR

Yesterday I went to watch Burtons "Alice in Wonderland" as part of my treatment. I suffer from a deeply profound hatred towards Johnny Depp and it was really quite a brave move to try and accept him in the role as the Hatter. And he was quite good actually, I sometimes even liked him... mainly because whenever he became mad, he spoke in some scottish dialect.
But in the name of Liza, Judy, Barbra and Bette this film is made of pure evil and by evil I mean clichées and not even the good tacky kind, just the kind that makes you physically sick. You would think that the direction of one usually clever and fab Tim Burton and the voices (and occasional face) of Matt Lucas, Stephen Fry and Alan Rickman would be somewhat good and perhaps even great. Not even these splendid three actors/comedians made up for it. I find that very distressing since those are three of my favorite brits.
I must point out that I love the story of Alice in Wonderland, and thus the plot is not what i hate about this film. I remember that as a kid I thought the red queen and her soldiers were some of the scariest characters I'd ever seen. Their authority and fascism as it was portrayed in the 1951 Disney film was really intense and utterly frightening. I listened to the story on tape and it would give me nightmares. That was one of the things I was hoping to relive when watching this film; the fright, the repulsion. But I did not get scared, and I was never impressed by the animation of the evil (and for that matter the good) characters. The repulsion however was achieved, but sadly for the wrong reason. Which is such a shame. The most prominent crime performed in this film were the lines. The amount of sugarcoated smugness that came out of especially Alice and the White queens mouths was impenetrable and made it impossible to breathe, and very possible to barf all over the lovely red velvet cinema chairs that our old local cinema Park Bio are the proud owners of.
The hyping and "match-made-in-heaven" talk this film has got, it is so utterly undeserved. God. Guh. Do not ever torment yourself by watching this pathetic film. Awful awful awful.

- Andrae