What Happened Tim Burton

One of the wonderful and unexpected advantages to living in Ecuador is the massive video stores stocked with bootleg movies that you can purchase for $1 each, or for 6 for $5. Sure, the cds have the title written in felt pen across the chipping silver paint and are packaged in what looks like glued together plastic dividers from lunch meat or cheese slices, and occasionally the shadows of people getting up for more popcorn wander across the screen, or the English subtitles don’t work, but for $1 to see the newest releases only days in the theater who can really complain? So I was thrilled to find Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland nestled on a shelf in my neighborhood pirate shop and quickly purchased it with the lone Sacagawea coin pulled from the depths of my pocket, hungry for the visual and intellectual feast I was about to consume.

All I have to say now that it is over and the credits are running is how the hell did you mess up Alice In Wonderland, Tim Burton? The story was already there, all you had to do was follow it. Why did you make Alice, the precocious, delightful, curious girl into a boring, unmotivated idiot? How does that even happen? Whoever told you your vision was brilliant should be fired. You had all these great characters at your disposal and you just ignored them. The butterfly thing at the end? Lame. The Madhatter’s jig at the end? Lame. Alice’s jig at the end, even lamer. Why did you make Alice grow and shrink over and over again? Once was enough. Tim Burton, you turned the Madhatter into a ninja. A ninja. The March Hare just threw things, the Queen wasn’t scary, Anne Hathaway’s little wrist flopping was distracting and irritating, there was no sense of peril, magic, or wonder at all. So disappointing. The only redeeming quality for the whole thing was that it only cost a dollar. Thank you Ecuadorian bootleggers.