Review:Alice in Wonderland

IMDb

Title: Alice in Wonderland
Distributor: Walt Disney Pictures
Director: Tim Burton
Writer(s): Linda Woolverton (screenplay), Lewis Carroll (books)
Staring: Mia Wasikowska, Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Anne Hathaway, Crispin Glover, Matt Lucas, Stephen Fry, Michael Sheen, Alan Rickman
MPAA Rating: Rated PG for fantasy action/violence involving scary images and situations, and for a smoking caterpillar.
Running Time: 108 min
Synopsis: 19-year-old Alice returns to the magical world from her childhood adventure, where she reunites with her old friends and learns of her true destiny: to end the Red Queen's reign of terror.

What Others Are Saying?

Rotten Tomatoes: T-Meter: 53% (Rotten), Top Critics: 61% (Fresh), RT Community: 74% (Fresh)
Metacritic: Critics: 53 out of 100, Users: 5.9 out of 10
MRQE Metric: 60: (10.6% A, 36.7% B, 39.0% C, 12.9% D, and 0.0% F)
Yahoo Movies: Critics: NA Users: B

My Review

Source Material: Based on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll. I haven't read the books so I don't know how it hold up to the source material but because I know how Tim Burton treats source material I am guessing its perrty close.

Entertaining Value:

• Action Elements: There a lot of "Fantasy Action" so sword play and what not.
  
• Comedy Elements: There are some cleaver line said from the Hatter that can be quite funny.
• Dramatic Elements: Enriched with drama and back-story.
  
• Sci-Fi / Fantasy Elements: One of the first fantasy so yes there is a good amount of VFX type shoots.
  

Cinematic Value:

• Acting and Dialogue: A: I loved the cast, I know being a Tim Burton film were going to see Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter but the other cast members were just as great.
• Art Direction: A+: Very beautiful, Seeing that magical world come to life was awesome. If I am not mistaking Tim Burton did some art direction project on his earlier films, so I expect the best.
• Cinematography: A: The Cinematography complimented the art direction like in every Tim Burton film. I think is was beautiful and magnificent.
  
• Direction: A: This film surely has the Tim Burton style, some pacing issues like near the begging it dragged a bit and near the end it was too fast the final battle was lacking length.
  
• Editing: B: It was cut together well but like I said before there was some pacing issues.
• Screenplay: A-: I think the story highlights the wonderfulness of both Alice stories while at the same time holding its own as an "original" story.
• Sound and Music: A: Finally a film with a score. It seem all the films I enjoyed watching over the past couple of months have been flooded with music from mediocre sound tracks.
  
• VFX: A: There was a good mixture of live action and animation, both of which blend together to create a pretty flawless Underland (Wonderland).
  

Moral and Ethical Value:

• Themes: Innocents, Ignorance, Betrayal
  
• Moral of the Story: Good defeats evil.
  
• Take Home: Following the white rabbit could lead to a wondrous adventure.
  

Overall: A-: Visually it was amazing. The other elements of the film hold up to be good also, I say see it once if not twice (once in 2-D and once in 3-D)