Why I Love #8: Alice in Wonderland

So I recently saw the new Alice in Wonderland by Disney that was directed by Tim Burton. I'm not really a Tim Burton fan.. I think I've only seen "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and "9" before this. No, I have not seen The Nightmare Before Christmas, but based on the hype, I was expecting something more out of Alice in Wonderland. I mean, even though I haven't seen Nightmare, I've seen all sorts of merchandise and heard good reviews of his films.

Before I write about the film, I just want to say that I am huge fan of books like Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, The Wizard of Oz (especially this), the Chronicles of Narnia, and others. I like the idea of children journeying into magical fairylands and the power of imagination. I read a lot of these before I entered high school, and the land of Oz was definitely my favorite. I had read Alice in Wonderland before, but I never really liked it. I think that the various adaptations in comic books, other movies, and various merchandise are much better than the original book. Of course, without the original novel by Lewis Carroll, none of the current adaptators would have been able to "put a spin" on it.

(Spoilers after.) So the new movie was disappointing. With the grown-up Alice twist and the star cast (including Anne Hathaway), I expected more of a spin on the original tale. I'm not sure, but I think this was supposed to be a remake instead of a sequel. (Or vice versa?) But the entire film was just like the Disney cartoon one EXCEPT for the fight scene at the end between Alice and Jabberwocky. Everything else had already been done before in the cartoon or was completely uninteresting. And the revelation at the end where Alice goes "Oh! Those weren't dreams (where I was in Wonderland before)... those were actual memories!" was so completely obvious that I wanted to say "No duh!" I mean, even a child could have understood that from just watching the movie without her saying it. Seriously, they just copied everything from the cartoon and then added a mediocre fight scene.

Thus, I was really disappointed by this movie. I did not like it at all, and I think the Alice mini-series on Syfy was much better. In fact that cannot even be compared to this remake. So don't watch this movie. Not recommended. 3 out of 5 stars. Just because it had nice special effects and for the awesome new Alice merchandise. Watch the Alice mini-series on Syfy instead. Seriously =D

Photo credit: Disney's Alice in Wonderland poster (2010)
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Why I Love #6: Movies That Aren't Sad

You know what's one thing that always manages to get me down? (Well, besides for the usual everyday things in life, of course.) Sad movies. I absolutely do not like sad movies ie. My Sister's Keeper. I have seen enough of them to last a lifetime, believe me. I mean, is there really any point to have the audience leaving the movie theatre thinking, "Wow, that was so... SAD!" Ok, so I understand that sometimes there are reasons why the movie has to be sad. For instance, My Sister's Keeper is about a family's struggle when they realize that one of their daughters has cancer. (Hope I didn't spoil that for anyone.. there's also a twist at the end, that I totally wasn't expecting & so I didn't spoil anything really.)

So sometimes, it is necessary to make a movie sad because the subject material itself is aad, and it wouldn't make sense to turn a bad situation into a comedy. (Oh, I just realized that the title I put onto this blog post was a little ironic. Yep, we are not going to talk about something I love today.. instead, we are going to talk about the opposite of the title.) The thing is, I just really don't like sad movies at all. If a movie wants to make me cry, then I think, "Why did I just watch that movie?" I mean, real life is depressing enough. Do we really want to depressed over fictional characters that we don't know, also? I guess the answer is yes, since there is such a high market and large audience for these "sob story" movies. Do people honestly need a movie to get their "sad fix" or something?

So yesterday, I rented My Sister's Keeper from a local Redbox. (You can read more about my LOVE of Redboxes in a previous Why I Love post.) The thing is, I knew already that the movie was going to be pretty sad. So you might wonder why in the world I want to see a movie that I knew was going to be sad if I really really don't like sad movies. Well, the answer is that many of my friends/acquaintances had been going on and on about the movie lately. And I would hope you would know by now, I only watch new releases. That is, if I have time. (I rarely ever have time to sleep, let alone watch a 2 hour movie.) But I enjoy watching new releases, just so I can talk about them with people when it turns out we've watched the same ones. I guess you could call me a pop culture junkie.

Anyway, many of my friends on Facebook have been saying, "This movie was so sad... it made me cry." and such. So I decided to see the movie just because so many people that I know have seen it. I believe that you could call this "peer pressure" of a sort, because I watched it only because I didn't want to be left out. In conclusion, I watched the movie. (I don't normally watch a movie for the acting, plot elements, lighting, or anything like that... so don't even ask that.) Instead, I realized again exactly why I hate sad movies. Because... it was sad! Duh. Not to say that the movie was horrible, because it wasn't. I'm sure that someone in the world out there would praise the acting, the twist in the plot, etc. But I'm not going to.

The only positive thing that it did to me was open my eyes to what someone going through cancer has to go through. It was very informative in that way, and I learned a lot from this movie. (Note: it must be horrible to have to bleed and throw up and everything, and I feel really bad now that I'm saying that I didn't like this movie). The truth is, I chose My Sister's Keeper as a subject on this blog post simply because it was the first sad movie that I have watched since I got this blog. It could have been any other movie out there, so please don't hate me if you're a huge fan of My Sister's Keeper or something. Lastly, I hope that next time a really popular "sad" movie comes out, someone will remind me not to see it =D
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