Alice

What started out with something that had a lot of promise, creepiness and some cool animation, the movie went downhill fast as the repeated use of "said the white rabbit" became so annoying and completely disrupted the flow of the movie. Take that out and the movie is watchable.

Overall, clever and unique, but I still would've rather skipped it. I don't get into this idea of the children's story with a dark, edgy twist to it. However, this isn't such a bad take on the Alice tale. It features a lot of Svankmajer's trademark decay, disorder, and death-images, but it also maintains the whimsy and anything-goes surreality of Carroll's work. However, the tea party is a tedious repetitive affair. Most egregious is the handling of dialogue: Brechtian, but annoying as hell.

I can appreciate the craftsmanship that went into this production, but it never really grabbed me. Alice just moves from weird set piece to weird set piece and then it ends. The drab colors and filthy locations started to wear me down after a while.

Visually intriguing and pleasingly warped, but ultimately it feels hollow. The arm's length dialogue/narration and non-existent score make this world feel emptier than it should. While this leads to some frustration during the more repetitive scenes, its creativity saves it from banality. Won't blow your mind, but should at least set a little fire on top of your head.

The animation is the only part of this movie that doesn't suck, and even the animation is constantly truncated by the misused and terrible sound effects, lack of plot, bad acting, insanely bad dialog, and repeated catch phrase; Alice's "said the white rabbit".