Alice in Wonderland / Valentine's Day: Mixed Reviews

 

K. has been sick all week so we cooked at home and stayed in this weekend, watching two movies that I borrowed from the library: Alice in Wonderland and Valentine's Day.  Starting with the positive: we both really liked Alice in Wonderland.  I was a little surprised; I thought I wasn't going to really like it, but I found it visually stunning; just the right amount of special effects to make it delightfully magical.  I was engrossed by the story as well; I had expected it to be just a remake of the classic Disney cartoon, but it wasn't; it took the story forward from the original cartoon with an appeal to a more adult and sophisticated audience.  The movie was based more on Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, rather than his original Alice in Wonderland.  I thought the relatively new actress playing Alice, Mia Wasikowska, was the perfect lovely Alice (plus I want every single dress that she wore in the movie...her dresses were absolutely aaaaaamazing...)  The movie has made me want to read Lewis Carroll's original books, as well as rewatch the cartoon version and go visit Disneyland again (of course everything makes me want to go to Disneyland).

My favorite dress; dress that I would most likely wear

Closeup of my favorite dress; I love the flower and the armband

My second favorite dress; I love ruffles. Reminds me a bit of Marc Jacobs a few seasons ago, my all-time favorite designer

I like this dress as well; very different from the others

The classic dress, very sweet, although not my style

On the other hand, Valentine's Day was pretty bad.  I wasn't expecting it to be great, but I was at least expecting it to be decent, given its huge star-studded cast, with some of my favorite actresses including Anne Hathaway, Julia Roberts and Jennifer Garner.  Unfortunately it was not believable, cheesy, cliched and predictable.  I downright disliked most of the characters (particularly Ashton Kutcher and Jessica Biel's characters).  I also have to say, not only is Taylor Swift a terrible singer and cheesy repetitive songwriter, but she's a bad actress too! I'm just not a Taylor Swift fan.  My favorite part of the whole movie was in the credits when Julia Roberts responds, "Once. Big mistake...BIG mistake" when her driver asks if she's shopped at Rodeo Drive before.  Now that was a great movie.