Alice doesn’t live here
By Don Simpson
The 19-year-old Alice (Mia Wasikowska) is being forced by her family into an arranged marriage with a snooty nose-picker named Hamish Ascot (Leo Bill). She is nearing 20-years-old (maiddom by Victorian standards), and Hamish seems to be Alice’s only chance at marrying a Lord. But Alice is way too independent to put up with these Victorian patriarchal norms (by golly, she does not even wear a corset or stockings!), so she runs off to follow a White Rabbit (voiced by Michael Sheen) down a rabbit hole. The rabbit hole leads Alice back to Underland (aka Wonderland), a place she visited when she was much younger and has dreamt about every night since (but somehow she does not remember anything about it).
The usual suspects – including the toking Caterpillar (voiced by Alan Rickman) and vaporous Cheshire Cat (voiced by Stephen Fry) – of Underland/Wonderland inform Alice that it is in her destiny to slay the Jabberwocky (voiced by Christopher Lee), the evil pet monster of the big-headed Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter). It seems as though history repeats itself in Underland/Wonderland. All of the inhabitants of Underland/Wonderland know that Alice has slain the Jabberwocky before, but she does not remember any of it. (Honestly, I don’t blame Alice for forgetting the least memorable scene of this film…more about that later.)
Alice is faced with choosing between an arranged marriage with Hamish and fulfilling her destiny as a Jabberwocky slayer? We all know which option she chooses…Jabberwocky it is! Then, when she finally returns to the real world, she calls off the wedding (surprise!) and becomes a strong proponent of globalizing trade. (Huh?) Off on the first boat to China she goes… So, Alice plans on using all of the independence, confidence and power that she gained while in Underland/Wonderland to succeed in the real world as a card-carrying capitalist?
Director Tim Burton seems to care much more about the visuals and technology (Oooh…3D! Bright colors!) than the performances or the plot. I have to say that my biggest disappointments were with Crispin Glover as the Knave of Hearts and Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter. Both performances felt very restricted –- I had hoped that Glover and Depp would be given full artistic freedom as actors and let loose to do what they do best: sheer lunacy. Was Burton purposefully restraining their performances with the assumption that the partial animation of their bodies would be crazy enough? (Or maybe he, or Disney, was trying to tone down the craziness…you know, for kids!)
Anne Hathaway seems to be the only actor who did not get the memo to tone the weirdness down –- instead her White Queen moves awkwardly like a marionette, looks like a black metal vixen (Until the Light Takes Us anyone?) and speaks so placidly you would think she is all doped up on ludes. Hathaway is far stranger than anyone (or anything) else in Wonderland/Underland (and that says a lot!). She is also one of the only characters that is not at least partially animated.
Burton’s Alice in Wonderland is a very odd beast. Visually it is an awkward hybrid of live action and animation, while the narrative is a hybrid of two Lewis Carroll novels (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass) that were adapted for the screen by Linda Woolverton (Beauty and the Beast). Burton’s creative talents truly shine whenever he is given full autonomous control of the creation of his own cinematic world (Beetle Juice; Edward Scissorhands; The Nightmare Before Christmas), while his most disappointing cinematic efforts have been when he has to recreate someone else’s world (Planet of the Apes; Charlie and the Chocolate Factory). Alice in Wonderland, a grossly formulaic Disney film (which could be because it is distributed by Walt Disney Pictures and penned by Woolverton), is no exception. Carroll’s original books are surreal, dark and quite complex (especially by today’s standards for children books) but the narrative of Burton’s Alice in Wonderland is one-dimensional, goofy and overly simplistic.
Speaking of simple, the final showdown between Alice and the Jabberwocky is like a For Dummies version of a battle scene from Lord of the Rings, Narnia or Harry Potter. Tim Burton, do you call that a climax?
