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Alice underwhelms in Wonderland
Depp captivates as usual (or unusual), but he and Burton's wife Bonham-Carter can't save Alice from falling hard. Image courtesy of Disney
Written by Kai Shultz - Freelance Writer
Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking Glass (1871), in which the eponymous Alice falls down a rabbit hole and is greeted by a slew of anthropomorphic creatures, gave new meaning to the genre of “literary nonsense”. Nonsensical in plot (a grinning cat? a smoking caterpillar?), Carroll’s novels paved the way for the likes of L. Frank Baum and Shel Silverstein while mocking the 19th century elite and all of their petty narcissism.
Tim Burton, a visionary in his own right, seemed the perfect choice to direct a re-imagining of Carroll’s Alice. His oeuvre, replete with characters of the idiosyncratic, is both accessible enough for the general public and artsy enough for the stubborn cinephile. From headless horsemen to human disfigurement and a demented candyman, Burton is a master of the macabre and Lynchian-lite cinema. And Alice in Wonderland looked to be Burton’s best yet: a beautiful, lush re-telling of one of the most peculiar, if delightfully off-beat, “children’s stories” of the last 200 years. What Burton delivers, however, is a film that is insipid and derivative, a strikingly dull Underland (as Wonderland is now called) where colors droop and landscapes sag. Working from a script written by Linda Woolverton, Burton’s Alice flails where it should fly, and is consistently bogged down by Danny Elfman’s manic score and a smattering of Disney clichés. The whole production feels rather stilted, really. The 3D here is nothing more than a gimmicky studio ploy aimed at raking in money, dialogue is underutilized and lacking in substance, and the plot sacrifices intellect for a cutesy-cutesy finale. What a bore.
Alice, played by the golden-locked Mia Wasikowska, is no longer the perky pre-pubescent darling of earlier film adaptations. She’s 19 now: a Rapunzel-like girl with little to say and even less to express – she’s a master at brow furrowing, though. Beginning at a posh garden party where the weaselly Hamish (Leo Bill) asks for Alice’s hand in marriage, it doesn’t take long for our heroine, fleeing from her upper-crust friends and family, to find herself once again tumbling down a rabbit hole. All of the creatures she encounters are certainly amusing. There’s the hookah-smoking caterpillar voiced by the talented Alan Rickman, a pair of hilariously combative twins, Tweedledee and Tweedledum (Matt Lucas), and Michael Sheen’s high-strung White Rabbit.
But something is missing here. For all of the glitz and glam of Burton’s world, a lack of whimsy curdles just about every scene. Alice strays from one location to the next looking divine but lacking in resolve, an egregiously truncated climax follows (Alice fights the Jabberwocky, ooooh), and our protagonist finds herself once again in the real world. (But this time as a conveniently liberated woman.) It’s all very formulaic and, dare I say it, yawn-inducing. Nothing is ever at stake. There is little in the form of formidable conflict and that, perhaps, is the film’s biggest downfall.
The supporting performances are certainly noteworthy. Johnny Depp (a frequent Burton contributor) is wonderfully in-tune as the lisping, if loveable, Mad Hatter (complete with jarring orange fro). Crispin Glover is appropriately creepy as the Knave of Hearts, Stayne. And Anne Hathaway floats and flitters as the amicable (though undoubtedly superficial) White Queen. But Helena Bonham Carter is the real showstopper here. Portraying Carroll’s Red Queen with deliciously exaggerated pomp, Bonham Carter (think Bette Davis crossed with Divine) shrieks and coos at all the right moments while bringing to her character a certain icy playfulness (barking at her minions to bring her a ‘warm pig belly for my aching feet’) that delights long after the credits roll. Her tyrannical fashionista, bulbous head and all, almost, but not entirely, saves Alice from a disappointingly bland tussle in Blunderland. Grade: C
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