Alice in Wonderland

Everyone and his dog knows the story of 'Alice in Wonderland'. A young lass sees a rabbit in a waistcoat, follows him, falls down a rabbit hold and ends up in a magical place known as Wonderland. My boyfriend, who is a massive fan of the book, has been waiting for years for the recently released film to come out and, last night as part of the birthday celebrations, we went out to see it.

What a crock of crap. Seriously.

It wasn't that I didn't want to enjoy it - I only read Carroll's book once, and that was many years ago, so my loving of the film wasn't dependant upon loyalty to the book.
Nor have I seen the entirety of the original, so I had no preconceived ideas about what the film would be like. Still, for all the all-star cast, the film was completely dire. There will be spoilers below, so if you haven't seen the film and wish to, I wouldn't recommend going any further.

Why?
Let's start with the Queens. Whitey McFloatalot (aka the White Queen) was so calm that she had to prance everywhere with her arms flying about in the sky, her white/black face was completely and utterly terrifying, and some of the dialogue that came from her was appalling.

[White Queen] Have you been speaking to the trees?
[Random attendant] Yes, your majesty
[White Queen] Perhaps a bit more kindly?

I mean, WHAT? This is the woman who banishes her own sister to the Outlands, right? The same one who condemns the Knave to spending the rest of his life with the Red Queen, the woman he hates enough to try to get himself killed?
The acting from her during the Let's-Gross-Out-The-Kids-In-The-Audience scene (the one where she is creating the antidote to Alice's largeness) was so badly written and acted that I was squirming in my rather painful cinema seat.

The Red Queen, however, was the opposite. Helena Bonham Carter was brilliant as the queen known for her most frequent order - "Off with their heads!" You know a film is bad when you are rooting for the bad guys to win, rather than the good ones. Okay, so I didn't want them to win so much as I thought they were far more interesting than Lady Graceful and her cronies. All of the best bits come from Reddy - the slapping of the Knave for allowing Alice to escape on the Bandersnatch with the Vorpal Sword. "Can I have a pig here?!" The hilarious which-frog-stole-the-tarts scene.

Okay - I have just mentioned it, so I will talk about the poem, 'Jabberwocky' now. I might not have read Alice in Wonderland, but I have read this poem more times than I can count - I have read it so many times that I can recite the poem from memory. Therefore the Hatter murdering it in a rather thick Scottish accent wasn't something I appreciated, though I understood it: it's quite a long poem and doing the entire thing would have taken away from the film. But it still ended up making me want to slap Burton for murdering an awesome poem. It also made for one of the most cringe-worthy parts of the whole film: the Jabberwocky is dead! What do they say?
"Oh Frabjous Day!" And in the background you hear another guy going "Calloo! Callay!" I was sitting there thinking - they did not just do that.

Hatter. Completely off his trolley, funny, brilliant - at least, he was supposed to be. Depp's version was rubbish - although most people I know seem to disagree with this assessment. His ranty mode, stopped only by someone saying his name forcefully, so funny the first time, I admit it. But three times over the entire film meant that it got old quite quickly. Also, what was with the Scottish accent that he kept breaking into? It was slightly odd - maybe it was because he supposed to be insane, but changing accents? Really?

Alright - I have done enough whinging. Now for the good things about the film.
1/ The Mad Hare. "Spoon!" Got the biggest laugh from the entire cinema (which was packed, by the way - surprising, as it was the 10pm showing) and was just brilliant.
2/ The Cheshire Cat. Voiced by Stephen Fry, what could possibly be wrong?

What's that?
I missed out Alice?
There's a reason for that, and I'm not even going to go near her.