Friday, March 5, 2010

v2, d5: Movies

I'm bummed that there's no Oscars party on Sunday. Or, if there is one, that I don't know about it.

Or that possibly, it was intentional that I not know about it.

*Looks around with SUSPICIOUS EYES!*

Ahem. Anyway.

Saw the new Alice in Wonderland tonite. Visuals were very good. Costumes were fantastic. Scenic design was very good, too. Everything else was pretty meh. Story wasn't very good, the dialogue lacked imagination. Performances, pretty much across the board, were pretty blah. Story-wise, a similar take on the Wonderland mythos has been done before, and done better, albeit quite a bit creepier. (I really hope THAT movie never actually gets made)

On the whole, however, it didn't seem like there was any reason this story needed to be an Alice in Wonderland story. Yes, the characters were all characters from the two most famous Alice books, but they really didn't need to be in order for the story to work. It could have happened in any fantasy world with any other generic characters, and the story itself really wouldn't have been impacted much. (Part of this is because the story wasn't too strong, but still) It felt like they wanted to make a weird creature-feature type movie, and rather than make up their own mythos and characters, they just used Lewis Carroll's.

That said, it isn't a bad movie. I'm glad I didn't spend a full nine dollars on it (thank you, AMC gift cards!), but if movies were $4.50 like back in the old days, it wouldn't have been a bad deal.