You never really care about the main character, Alice. You get no sense of her having any real inner life. The script is flat and the acting is flat. Zero subtext. No emotional connection between Alice and the Mad Hatter. The formula for every big studio movie now is distract with visual affect, violence or rapid cuts - use it for the trailer, and not care whether the audience connects to the story. The studio's sole objective is widen their margin of profit. Not enlighten or inspire. All movies are now summer movies. The end is especially lame. She just tells the other characters plain, flat "lessons" that inexplicably she's somehow learned. This could have been a new classic by Tim Burton. It's the opposite.