ALICE IN WONDERLAND (2010)

RATING: 2.5/5

Making ALICE IN WONDERLAND is obviously a no-brainer for visionary filmmaker like Tim Burton. It's the kind of project he's destined to make one way or another. The good news is, there are sense of familiar quirkiness and the bizarre elements of his trademark. But yet ALICE IN THE WONDERLAND feels oddly lack of wonder and a little ordinary for that matter.

Johnny Depp's Mad Hatter role is nothing but typical of go-for-broke zany charm that there's really nothing new we haven't seen him before. Relatively unknown Mia Wasikowska has the ideal presence and the look of a confused teenager but her Alice role is sadly hollow.

Even though the movie is blessed with an expensive $200-million budget tag, most of the CGI feels a bit dated while the plot is rather average. Still, there are plenty of fun to be had here -- notably for the memorable appearance by incomparable Helena Bonham Carter as the Red Queen and the movie's undeniable catchphrase of the moment: "Off with the head!".

Overall, this is hardly rank alongside with Burton's better movies but certainly a notch above than that PLANET OF THE APES stinker he once made.