Newcomer Mia Wasikowska has been panned for her portrayal of Alice in the Tim Burton 3-D fantasy Alice In Wonderland that debuted last week.
Media in Wasikowska’s homeland, Australia, reported the panning by a British movie critic who declared the 20-year-old looked like she was “on heroin”.
The movie stars Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter, Burton’s wife. Robbie Collin, the critic from News of the World, did not spare his pen for the stars, either.
Depp’s Mad Hatter he called a “flailing, pointless idiot”. Depp gave “the worst role he’s played in his life”.
Collin found Bonham Carter, star of the Merchant Ivory flicks, lifeless. “Put some bloody EFFORT into it, woman,” he said of her portrayal of the Red Queen. Collin likened the performance to a “seventh-rate impression of Queenie from Blackadder II”.
For him, the movie was a “bona fide, bums-in-the-air fiasco that needs to be burned and the ashes hurtled off in the direction of the nearest black hole as soon as you can, NASA”.
He also said: “In fact, it’s Lesbian Vampire Killers bad – the kind of film that you don’t just dislike or even hate, but one that your body physically rejects like a dodgy organ transplant.”
Collin said of Wasikowska: “There’s not been a lead character this paper-flat since the South Park movie. The girl’s got all the warmth of a refrigerated trout, and a face you’d expect to see Blu-Tacked to the inside of a London phone box. She’s not a heroine – she looks like she’s ON heroin.”