Alice In Wonderland

We rented the DVD from the vending machine in our local grocery store for a dollar! One dollar, no fuss, no muss. I was shocked. Verizon wants 3, 4, 5 or even $6 to watch a movie on their super-fantabulous on-demand fiber-optic network. Given a choice, I would pick driving the two miles to the grocery store every time. I don't mind paying to watch a show, but I don't like having to wade through all the crap to get to what I want, which is what I have to do with Verizon.

We record Law & Order and In Plain Sight on the Verizon DVR so we can watch them when we want and fast forward through the ads. I would much rather pay to watch it on a DVD and not have to deal with Verizon at all. This whole system is nuts. Advertisers pay big money to have their ads shown along with the show. I pay big money to get the show delivered to my house via this fiber-optic network, then I pay more money so I can record the show so I can avoid having to watch all the ads. I think the only reason we have Verizon is so we can watch the Blazers basketball games, and since Comcast has some kind of deal with the Blazers, when Comcast is handling the game we only get standard resolution, we don't get the Hi-Def version.

We do use the internet a lot. The kids use it to watch TV shows on their computers. I suppose I should get some kind of device that would let me connect the TV to the internet. I'm still not satisfied that Verizon can deliver hi-def video without hiccuping at least occasionally. And their DVR is just like all consumer electronics these days. It mostly works, most of the time, but it has more glitches and misses and bugs than a first year programming students work.

Okay, enough of that. What about the movie?

Curious. The visuals are great. The story, the characters, the atmosphere, the plot, ummm, not so hot. Almost missing entirely. Of course, I am comparing it to Disney's animated version from umpteen years ago. That was a great flick! That's the Alice In Wonderland story I know. I don't know if I ever read the book, if I did it obviously didn't make much of an impression on me.

The white queen is surely a odd character, and what's with the nearly black lipstick? Sometimes I think she is as nuts as the red queen. And what's with the big head? And the various big body parts of her cortege? It's like they gathered up a whole bunch of weird ideas and just dumped them into this movie. They don't seem to have anything to do with anything.

Alice and the bloodhound seem to be the only decent characters in the whole show. Well, the mad hatter is okay. Trying to stay within the bounds of PG really limited their options. Maybe I just expected too much. Maybe that's why it was only a dollar.

Update February 2017 replaced missing image.