REVIEW: ‘Alice in Wonderland’

The Big Picture

• The Burton-Depp-Elfman-Bonham-Carter formula is not a guarantee for success, again.  At all.
• Pretty pictures can only barely distract from a story that is woefully underdeveloped.
• If you’ve never read the original Lewis Carroll books (as most children haven’t), you will definitely miss most of the references.

I admit to having already been slightly biased before I walked into the theater to see Tim Burton’s latest installation, “Alice in Wonderland”.  This bias was derived mainly from the barrage of trailers and teasers that have been permeating the webtersphere for the last few months because, frankly, it really just didn’t seem like that much of a story.  And yet, I was willing to leave my expectations at the door and open myself up for what was touted to be a grand “re-entry” of Burton into (dare I say) credible directorship.

The problem with no expectations (or even very low expectations) is that when disappointment comes, it is a double let-down – once for not meeting expectations and again for failing to prove us wrong in expecting something bad.

Disney’s promotional department was specific in not marketing their latest “Alice in Wonderland” version as a sequel to the original story – but that’s exactly what it was.  Thirteen or so years after Alice Kingsley (Mia Wasikowska) first visited that magical place of madness and mayhem, she returns as an escape from a painfully ham-handed and oddly dispassionate moment of “stress” in Victorian England.  She’s being proposed to by a lord’s son, her sister’s husband is a dog, her aunt is crazy (does it run in the family?), and she’s being stalked and teased (politely) by a slew of people we only meet briefly and could care less about.  And this doesn’t bother us because we also do not care about Alice – who really just looks like a lady “dying of the wastes” or some other vague degenerative condition.

When you watch a horror movie or a fantasy movie, especially one where the main character is taken into a realm outside of consensus reality, there is a moment (usually early on) when they are faced with the inescapable fact of their unrealistic surroundings.  They have to come to terms with their immediate surroundings being something different and thereby make the choice to respond accordingly.  Alice seems to have maybe suffered some sort of mental deficiency along with sleep deprivation because repeated attempts to assert the world she’s interacting with as real are rebuffed – through the whole movie.

Alice isn’t the only one that suffers this kind of addiction to seeing things through painfully myopic lenses:  every character makes their decision on whether or not she’s “THE” Alice, and they stick by their guns through the whole story, regardless of evidence to the contrary.  And then, in the last scenes, as though someone realized that they were running out of film, suddenly everyone is ready to rally to her support in suddenly deciding to take on what was only the day before a preposterous and ridiculous responsibility.  There was no moment of insight, no visible “ah-ha!”, save for the aggressive exposition delivered with as much grace as that sledge-hammer could be by the delightful Alan Rickman – and “aggressive expositions” are only effective if the character receiving such blunt-force trauma can be seen to be moved by it.

As the story not so much unfolded as plodded along like a brain-damaged ox with only half a load of hay, I kept expecting these moments of conflict or conversation to ignite a light of reason and understanding would flicker to life and maybe provide the characters with some depth, if not direction.  It just didn’t happen.  By the time Alice came to real-ize her true situation, it was way too late to credit her with any kind of intellectual acumen.  Every scene seemed to exist solely for the purpose of leading to the next scene… but never to a plot that we could be bothered to invest emotionally in.

Now, don’t get me wrong: if you’re a Tim Burton fan, you will enjoy a rather pedestrian stroll (pun intended) through his usual signature imagery of curly-q branches and horizontal stripes.  He’s got a particular feel, a special tone, so when you know that Burton’s at the helm, you know what to except every time.  And yet, even as interesting as the atmosphere was, it still struck me as bland and annoying colorless.  Even the scenes and elements that were supposed to be more colorful and splashy as part of the delineation between environments came across as uninspired and boring.

The exception – and isn’t he always? – was the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp).  I only say he is an exception because he was colorful.  He was loud, he was exaggerated, he was… Captain Jack Sparrow.  Or rather, he was Captain Jack when he wasn’t Willy Wonka or Sweeney Todd.  This is yet another entry into the long list of evidence that Tim and Johnny have some kind of weird relationship off-screen that convinces Johnny to take on these roles.  The leading odds are on blackmail, followed closely by some kind of weird cult attachment.  Yes, friendship and mutual respect are also on the list, but they’re only taking bets at 40 to 1.

It has just enough odd violence (eye-gouging, mainly) to make it probably unsuitable for very young children, and it’s entirely too ponderous for the average adult to find it interesting more than once, if even that.  Fans of Lewis Carroll’s work will find it easy to follow, but if you haven’t read the book in the last six months, you’re really going to find yourself wondering just what the heck they’re mumbling about.  If you have read the book in the last six months, or paid any attention to the other derivations of the story such as American McGee’s Alice or even Disney’s original feature-length cartoon from 1951 (yes, it really has been that long), you’re going to wonder where the heck the rest of the characters are.  Too much is left to inference, and what is said directly isn’t taken seriously – so how can we?

As far as it being in “glorious 3-D”, I don’t really see how the story was better served by the format.  It was easy to see, however, the comparatively poor job that was done with the CG of Crispin Glover’s Knave of Hearts (what was up with that?!?), not to mention the horses and other pixel-bound figures.  Of the $250 million that it took to make this movie, I’m guessing that most of the budget went to getting A-list actors – but then their potential was clipped short by a pretty bad script.  It’s really a crying shame that more didn’t go into making it a better all-around experience.

If you’re already a fan, you’re going to go see it – I know that – but just don’t get your hopes up.  It’s a pretty-once, but it has neither the depth nor the grace to be more than that.