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There's precious little to keep you interested in this hideous-looking and busily boring shit-fest of a film that is both a nadir for director Tim Burton's creative trajectory and emblematic of everything wrong with Hollywood in the early 21st century. Much muchness? Indeed. Alice in Wonderland is the cinematic equivalent of a priapism.

It takes so long for Alice (dreadfully bland Mia Wasikowska) to figure out who she is and why she’s where, that by the time the light bulb goes off over head, you’ve already entered a siege mentality and are praying to the movie gods to let the credits roll. Anne Hathaway is so annoying as the goofy White Queen, you just want to squish her like a bug. Helena Bonham Carter is wasted as the evil queen, hamming it up to no effect because she’s consumed by visual effects in every shot. Even her head has been artificially enlarged. And Johnny Depp is too ugly to look at as the Mad Hatter, given abundantly more screen time than the Mad Hatter should ever have.

Did Tim Burton actually design this movie? Did anyone design this movie? Was any thought at all put into it? It looks like fourteen first-graders were given a keg of Red Bull and locked in a closet for fifteen minutes to design the characters and settings. This has got to be one of the ugliest movies ever. It hurts to look at it. That’s my biggest gripe, but hardly my only one.

The film is emotionally bankrupt, deficient in character, lacking in charm, and its narrative swerves like a drunken door mouse. To be fair, I’ve never liked the episodic and nonsensical nature of Lewis Carroll’s story and suspect I never will. But I was hoping Tim Burton could make something unique and interesting out of it. If I had to say anything nice about the movie, I would say that Danny Elfman contributes a very cool main theme and that the Jabberwocky looks cool. But that is really, truly and honestly it.

This Alice is a nauseating miasma. If this baby has a daddy, it can only be Disney’s marketing department.

Academy Awards: Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design (I call shenanigans!)

Oscar Nomination: Best Visual Effects