Tim Burton's 'Alice' drains the wonder out of 'Wonderland'
Tim Burton's re-imagined 3-D "Alice in Wonderland" is a crushing disappointment.
Not a terrible movie. Far from it. But a disappointment nonetheless.
Burton, the goth bad boy of fantastical cinema, treats Lewis Carroll's classic story as a sort of digitalized Frankenstein's monster, pieced together from parts of "The Chronicles of Narnia," "The Wizard of Oz," "The Golden Compass" and even his own "Beetlejuice" and "Sleepy Hollow."
The result is a movie that sucks the awe out of awesome and drains the wonder out of Wonderland.
A necessary sense of magic and mystery is missing here, leaving Burton's marvelous eye for computer-animated special effects to carry the narrative.
Of these, the Red Queen (played by a delightfully demented Helena Bonham Carter) rules as the film's supreme character creation with her huge, bulbous noggin resting atop a tiny body crowned by a cute, heart-shaped coif.
Johnny Depp's Mad Hatter, however, looks like Bozo the Clown with an eye infection.
Burton, working from a promising concept by screenwriter Linda Woolverton, reimagines Alice as a 19-year-old woman (played by the pale and charismatic Mia Wasikowska).
Just as the drippy Hamish (Leo Bill) asks Alice to marry him at a highly public party, Alice spots a white rabbit (voiced by Michael Sheen) with a coat and a watch.
"I need a moment," she says as if she's in a Twix commercial. Off she goes, and her adventure begins.
If I have this all correct, Alice falls down a rabbit hole, changes dress sizes faster than Kirstie Alley, gets her arm ripped open by a CGI beastie, jumps on a bunch of disembodied heads to cross a river and battles a winged dragon with a tiny sword, all so she can muster the moxie to turn down a proposal of marriage from a twitty Brit suitor?
Everywhere she goes in "Underland," which is what they call it here, Alice is constantly asked "Are you the Alice?"
The Dormouse (Barbara Windsor) says no. Absolem the caterpillar (the unmistakable Alan Rickman) says she's "almost Alice."
Has Alice been here before? If she has, why can't she remember?
Apparently, a magical scroll foretells of a young maiden warrior destined to slay the dreaded Jabberwocky, a dragonesque monstrosity serving the Red Queen.
Her crimson majesty doesn't want anyone slaying her Jabberwocky, and dispatches brigades of soldier cards and the duplicitous Knave of Hearts (Crispin Glover) to capture Alice.
The most disappointing aspect of Burton's 3-D interpretation of "Alice" is the squandered opportunities for fun and wit.
The CGI twins Tweedledee and Tweedledum (both played by Matt Lucas) are a bumbling dopey drag. Here was an inviting opportunity for comical interplay and inspired silliness.
Nope. Squandered.
Anne Hathaway is miscast as the White Queen (with goth makeup?) with the Cheshire Cat (voiced by Stephen Fry) a whimiscal but personality-challenged entity.
Depp's Mad Hatter, a role exponentially increased from Carroll's stories, serves as blatant stand-in for Dorothy's Scarecrow, emerging as the story's conscience and the one fantastical character Alice promises to remember over all the others.
"Alice" begins as a Carroll tale, then rapidly loses its Carrollness as it evolves into a mediocre, CGI-stuffed action movie with Alice summoning forth her inner Red Sonja.
The problem is that she was already a saucy, independent woman who refuses to wear a corset or stockings and conform to Victorian society.
Yet once in Underland, she inexplicably becomes compliant to any and all commands given by people (and pieces of paper) around her. Does she really need the Mad Hatter to tell her to think for herself?
"You've lost your muchness!" he tells Alice.
He could just as easily be criticizing Burton.
<p class="factboxheadblack">"Alice in Wonderland"</p>
<p class="News">★★</p>
<p class="News"><b>Starring:</b> Mia Wasikowska, Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Anne Hathaway, Crispin Glover, Alan Rickman, Michael Sheen, Timothy Spall</p>
<p class="News"><b>Directed by:</b> Tim Burton</p>
<p class="News"><b>Other:</b> A Walt Disney Pictures release. Rated PG. 108 minutes</p>