In Disney’s animated version of Lewis Carroll’s classic children’s tale, Alice constantly described Wonderland as nonsense. Tim Burton’s rendition combines Carroll’s two Alice books and makes nonsense of them booth. But when I say nonsense I mean pointless.
In this version, Alice (Mia Wasikowska, AMELIA) is a 19-year-old who is about to be married off to the boorish Lord Ascot (Tim Pigott-Smith, QUANTUM OF SOLACE). To escape his very public proposal, she runs off into the woods where she follows a white rabbit in a waistcoat (Michael Sheen, THE QUEEN) down a rabbit hole. The White Rabbit and others believe she has been to their land before, but she doesn’t believe them. The Blue Caterpillar (Alan Rickman, SWEENEY TODD) tells her that she is hardly the Alice they were looking to slay the Jabberwocky, a fire-eyed dragon.
While this version of the tale combines ALICE IN WONDERLAND with THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS, the plotting is very by the numbers. The classic characters are all quickly introduced in the first act. Alice goes through the classic bits with growing large and shrinking small and ends up at a familiar tea party with the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp, EDWARD SCISSORHANDS), who mumbles some gibberish to her about the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter, FIGHT CLUB) destroying his party, bandersnatch and frabjous day. The plot-driven story has Alice saving the Mad Hatter from the Red Queen, fighting off advances from Stayne, The Knave of Hearts (Crispin Glover, BACK TO THE FUTURE), searching for the vorpal sword and ending with her fighting for the White Queen (Anne Hathaway, RACHEL GETTING MARRIED) in an epic battle right out of Narnia.
The Wonderland segments are bookended by scenes in the real world. They’re supposed to show her as a pawn in the games of others. She has adventures in Wonderland and comes out different, but it’s not at all connected. Some people in the real world connect to characters in Wonderland, but the connections are one dimensional at best. She needs to go to Wonderland to reconnect with thinking of six unbelievable things before breakfast? This is her character development? If the message is to spark adventure and imagination it never sold that with such a boring conventional story. I’ve been on this same journey before with many more surprises.
As with any Burton film, the visuals are amazing. The character design of the Mad Hatter is off-putting, but for the first time in his career, I felt Depp played it too safe, making the character silly, not bonkers. When the Mad Hatter acts completely logical in helping Alice save Wonderland, he ceases to be the Mad Hatter. And wait till you see his silly dance. He won’t clear a dance floor, but maybe the theater. The Red Queen with her enormous head is a perfect design to match the egotistical character. Carter is the best part of the film, providing the Queen with the right dose of nonsense, selfishness and vulnerability. Stephen Fry is lost behind the tacked on Cheshire Cat character.
Not since PLANET OF THE APES have I been so disappointed in a Burton film. I felt the loose madness of the ALICE world would have been freeing for him, but he seems tied down by Linda Woolverton’s pedestrian screenplay. The story lacks the unpredictability of Disney’s animated version. For a Burton production, I expected the twisted logic of the world to be similar to Jan Svankmajer’s brilliant animated experimental version, but his “crazy” characters plodded down a well worn path in lock step with the typical story beats. If Wonderland is all but a dream then a better title would have been “Alice in Slumberland.”
Rick DeMott
Animation World Network
Creator of Rick's Flicks Picks
