The Movie Diary

This weekend, we spent our hard-earned cash on Alice in Wonderland because we’re pretty much Tim Burton fans. We started being fans around Beetle Juice and well… never stopped. His movies are creative and crazy and just a ton of fun. But well… Alice is lacking. Sorry. It just is.

The visuals are pretty cool. The Tweedles, the Jabberwock, the Catepillar, and the Cheshire Cat are amazing. I particularly love Ches, as his big green eyes and blue stripes are a particularly good look for any cat. And he’s charming. Who wouldn’t love him?

What Shannon (my daughter) and I took umbrage with was the script. It totally sucked! Alice in Wonderland (and it was really more Through the Looking Glass) is supposed to be fun and funny. With few exceptions, it wasn’t. The story was bland and the dialogue barely made me smile. Bummer. I had such high hopes for that.

And really, they had such a great cast, but it was underused. Stephen Fry (Cheshire Cat) had way too little time on screen, and Christopher Lee spoke about 10 words as the Jabberwock. Pity.

Aside from the Cheshire Cat, the best part of the movie was Johnny Depp’s dance at the end of the film (the Fudderwhack), when the Jabberwock was slain. It was delightful, and very, very short.  I’d give this movie 2 stars out of 5. Wait for the DVD.

Julie & Julia, on the other hand, was delightful.  I figured that any Meryl Streep movie just had to be amazing, and it was. She was excellent as Julia Child, and following her French cooking career was interesting and fun, but watching Amy Adams as Julie working her way through Julia’s recipes was fun and made the movie real. Even my husband, who really doesn’t like these types of movies and told me to wake him if he fell asleep,  admitted that he enjoyed the movie, too. Usually, he’s all about bombs and boobs. Ah well…

Meryl held even he spellbound. It was a hoot. I’d give this movie a 5 for performance and script, but the acting was a total 10.