ALICE IN WONDERLAND; Burton's souless epitah?

By Matt Holmes / July 6, 2010

rating: 1.5

No matter how you shake it, the 2010 Tim Burton just isn't the same guy he was five, gosh - actually ten years ago. Has it really been that long since he made Sleepy Hollow, the last movie where you felt like he was really trying? Latter day sinful film-making plagues all great directors of course, with the rare exception of a few (Scorsese, Cronenberg come to mind). But seldom has Burton been this generic, his trademark so absent, the result so "meh". I miss the passionate Tim Burton who brimmed with originality, his films that bursted to the seams with lived-in worlds of epic grandeur that you could believe in. I miss the inventive Gothic expressionistic wonder of most of his first eight pictures. Sadly, that Burton, the outsider who had a heart and limitless imagination, is long gone and I guess we have to come to terms with it. One of the great auteurs from 90's cinema is barely visible here in his new Alice In Wonderland adaptation that feels like it was made by a watered down, paint-by-numbers, Disneyfied filtered Burton. There's a few moments of visual pizazz and the magical spark among a few creatures (notably the visuals and excellent voice work of Stephen Fry's Cheshire Cat), but all in all this is a disappointing, lower effort in the Burton/Depp filmography and it ranks alongside Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as a candy-coloured, tonally confused mis-step for the creative pair. There's still enough interest in the movie thanks to the Depp/Burton fanbase, the express train that is Disney's marketing capabilities and with the feather in the cap of it being the first 3-D movie since Avatar - so it's sure to bring in the crowds, at least initially. But ask around when your friends and co-workers see it, ask of their reaction. It'll be a meh... it was alright. Word of mouth could kill it, but I think interest in the format will allow a stay of execution. Expect the critics to be split 40/60 in favour of being negative, because there is bits to like (a wonderful production design, top notch visuals with a fun element of 3-D for the first half of the movie... but structurally it's a nightmare, and a bore).

A blending of sorts of both Carroll's legendary 1865 work "Alice Adventures in Wonderland" and it's conterversial 1871 sequel "Through the Looking Glass" - the 3-D extravaganza for a little while holds some creativity and enchantment that stands above previous adaptations of the fable. Having Alice played by a late teen Mia Wasikowska as a 19 year old girl who returns to the "Underworld" (apparently it's always been called this, it's just Alice missed heard it as Wonderland originally) on her second visit, makes for a more somber, at times heartingly nostalgic and grown-up piece. Well, in places. I actually wish they had pushed this darker theme a little harder, and it kept threatening to be a good movie. For all it's problems, the Steven Spielberg re-imanging sequel of Peter Pan, the early 90's movie Hook had the clever framing device of an older Pan who had forgotten Never Neverland and all the colourful characters that he once knew. Something similar could have worked here and I kept feeling like there was a missed opportunity for the creatures to be pissed at Alice for not remembering them, and for leaving them. Because they are aware they only exist in Alice's imagination (which was a smart touch), they should have banded together - questioning the inevitably of growing-up and the pro's and con's of Alice living in a real world without fantasy. Except the conceit is the creatures don't initially believe her to be the real Alice (except for Mad Hatter, who "would know her from anywhere") and I just couldn't help but think this was the wrong way to go. Also, you'll never believe that she'll decided to say in Wonderland throughout the movie and for me, and the question of real world vs. fantasy just wasn't played out enough. Either Burton was under instructions from Disney not to push it as to confuse the younger audience - or maybe he just didn't care enough.

The whole thing starts out brightly enough. Screenwriter Linda Woolverton (a go to Disney writer behind Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King) has invented something new to the mythology as a very white looking and weak Alice is sick-to-the stomach at her own engagement party, where an arranged marriage has been setup by her widowed mother, to the hapless son born to a family of wealth. She doesn't want to marry Hamish, of course - despite her mother's persistence she is still just 19 years old, and has her whole life to lead. When she is proposed to in front of the guests (which pop-out and look ombinous in 3-D), she sees the white rabbit in a waistcoat (Michael Sheen) pointing towards a clock. It is time for her to return to Wonderland. She flees the proposal and follows him down the rabbit hole. Here's the first problem I had with the picture. That opening was a nice introduction to Alice but why oh why, wasn't it either... A) Shot in normal 2-D colour, with a prompt message asking you to "Please Put on the 3-D Glasses" as she fell down the whole, where it would then transform into a 3-D spectacular with as much awe and wonder as when Wizard of Oz flicked from black-and-white to colour 80 years ago? B) Shot in black-and-white, where it would then become colourisied as she was in Wonderland?

From there comes an introduction to the colourful characters of Tweedledee and Tweedledum (Matt Lucas), the mad Scottish goofball the March Hare (Paul Whitehouse), the smoky blue caterpillar (Alan Rickman), the squeaky swashbuckler Doormouse (Barbara Windsor) and of course Johnny Depp's rather strange and creepy looking - Madonna gap-teeth esque, Mad Hatter, who Depp sometimes played Irish, sometimes played Scottish, sometimes English and occasionally a mad, red-faced child molesting serial killer. I guess he's Mad, so yeah. Then comes, moment number 2 that ticked me off. Undoubtedly, the most memorable sequence from the animated Alice in Wonderland (always said to be Walt Disney's favourite boyhood story) was the joyous tea party scene but Burton's re-imagining is so mundane and quickly rushed through, without any kind of spark that well, it just plain pissed me off.

"Why is a raven like a writing desk?" - Depp's Mad Hatter asks no less than three times during the course of the movie, the famous Lewis Carroll conundrum that features in his original text, and started a foray of questioning back in his day. The answer of course, isn't there isn't an answer. The riddle is as empty as his original plots because Carroll didn't believe in them for Alice, which was much more episodic in content which were filled with philisophical and allegorical ideas at its core. Of course, this wouldn't do full a live-action full length feature. So Woolverton has come up with the narrative crux of a war between the evil Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter, who despite her bobbel-like big head and evil ways, really just wants to be loved) and her sister, the virtious White Queen (Anne Hathaway). The movie sadly plays it's cards pretty early on, and you can see whether it's going - the final twenty minutes a bore to sit through as it becomes more and more like any other Disney epic of this kind - a CGI fest battle where the threat of the kingdom is on the line feels drawn heavily from the pages of The Chronicles of Narnia. Alice in Wonderland, for all of Lewis Carroll's oddities - should never have ended this way and I switched off and the whole thing becomes very ordinary, very fast. I'm sure I've seen this finale in a dozen Disney or fantasy movies over the past ten years.

Burton's been living the good life for so long, that I guess he just doesn't care anymore. He gets paid well for adapting these classics which don't challenge him and don't look awfully difficult to make and he gets to spend months and months with his best friends and family. Any creative drive has been sucked away and his responsibilities as a family man turned him elsewhere. The result is a movie that never really finds it's tone or potential and is a paint-by-numbers effort, just like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Burton is on auto-pilot. Many have thought that for a while that the over-use of Johnny Depp in similar mad-cap roles was the weak-link in Burton's filmography. I personally would point the finger at his muse Helena Botham Carter. When he was with Lisa Marie - his movies were special, and whatever relationship they had - it worked for him as a director. He has since been creatively redundant ever since he shacked up with Carter, who has starred in every one of his movies since (Planet of the Apes, Big Fish, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Corpse Bride, Sweeney Todd & now Alice in Wonderland). I hate to say it, and I'm happy that he's happy - but his career has never been the same.

Alice in Wonderland is released in the U.K. and U.S. next Friday.