Alice in Wonderland

Maybe I would have liked this movie better if it wasn't called Alice in Wonderland. Despite the title, and the claim that it is based on the classic stories by Lewis Carroll, there seems to be very little inspiration from the books on display. Instead, it seems that filmmaker Tim Burton and screenwriter Linda Woolverton (The Lion King) were more inspired by recent fantasy epics like Harry Potter or Chronicles of Narnia. Likewise, the film's muddy and somewhat pointless 3D (which never comes across as anything more than a gimmick) was obviously inspired by the boatloads of money Avatar has been making for the Fox studio.

That's not to say there are absolutely no familiar elements from the Alice stories here. There are the twin brothers, Twiddledee and Twiddledum (both played by Matt Lucas, with the aid of CG effects), constantly feuding with each other. The Cheshire Cat (voice by Stephen Fry) still has his unmistakable grin. The Red Queen still rules with an iron fist, although as portrayed by Helena Bonham Carter, she comes across more as an angry buffoon than a real threat. And the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp) still presides over a mad tea party, although with his orange fright wig hair and white skin, he looks more like the demented cousin of Bozo the Clown. Rather than pay tribute to these memorable characters, or the stories that created them, the filmmakers have decided to give us an entirely new story - one that sadly gives most of the characters very little to do. If you're going to write a new story for these characters, at least write one that actually involves them, rather than making them observers mainly standing on the sidelines. The Mad Hatter plays the biggest role, thanks to Depp's star power. But even he's not as interesting as he could have been, or has been in past interpretations.

The story kicks off with Alice now 19-years-old, and convinced her earlier adventures in Wonderland were all an elaborate dream her childish mind created. She's played by Mia Wasikowska as a confused young adult, who finds herself trapped in a society she does not agree with. Alice's mother is forcing her into a marriage with a wealthy aristocrat bore she has no interest in, and fears that her entire life has been planned out for her before she has had a chance to experience it. When the aristocrat proposes to her, Alice knows she needs a chance to escape, and sees it when she spots a strange White Rabbit (voice by Michael Sheen), who almost seems to be signaling her. She follows it down the rabbit hole into Wonderland, and this is presumably where the movie is supposed to take off. But quite frankly, I found the prologue in London much more interesting. Alice comes across as a strong-minded girl during these scenes, and Wasikowska gives her the right amount of intelligence and child-like innocence that the character needs. She's at an important crossroad in her life, and rather than rush head-first into the life that has been planned for her, she opts instead to explore other worlds for herself.

The world she discovers is a disappointment, to say the least. It's an impressively-mounted, but somewhat gaudy CG world that never quite feels real. There's a hollowness to Burton's Wonderland. We constantly feel like we're looking at an expensive special effect shot, and never quite buy the illusion that we're in another world. I was reminded of the first time I saw Steven Spielberg's Hook back in 1991. That was the film that featured Robin Williams as an adult Peter Pan returning to Neverland to save his kids. The Neverland that the film gave us never felt organic. It looked like it had been shot on a big, expensive, overly-cluttered set. Here, we get some pretty, but ultimately soulless CG landscapes that never come to life the way that they should. A movie like this should be filled with color and whimsy. We get plenty of color (though somewhat muted by the 3D glasses), but the whimsy seems to have been lost along the way. Nothing catches our attention. Nothing makes us gasp or smile with delight. As envisioned by Burton and his special effects team, Wonderland is a surprisingly bland and uninteresting place.

I guess this somewhat makes sense, based on the plot. Alice returns to Wonderland, only to find it overrun with massive beasts and mechanical soldiers working under the Red Queen, who has taken control of the entire land after staging a coup against its rightful ruler, her sister the White Queen (Anne Hathaway). The land is in ruins, and many of its citizens secretly plot to defy the evil Red Queen, and return her sister to power. Alice is needed, as a prophecy states that she will retrieve a magic sword and slay the Red Queen's vicious Jabberwocky, a creature that resembles a giant dragon. The evil Queen knows of the prophecy, and sends her loyal Knave of Hearts (Crispin Glover) and his soldiers to track Alice down. This leads to a series of elaborate chase and battle scenes that seem strangely out of place in the film. Equally misplaced is the film's entire third act, where Alice dons a suit of armor, and fights alongside the White Queen's army in a massive battle for Wonderland's fate that seems like it came right out of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films. If the Disney studio wanted a new fantasy franchise (seeing as they've given up on the Narnia films early), they might have wanted to try to come up with their own idea, rather than forcing it into a story that should not end with an epic battle sequence.

I know I've been pretty negative about the experience so far, but don't walk away from this review thinking that Alice in Wonderland is a bad, or even an unwatchable movie. It is very misguided, but does have some hints of the film it could have and should have been. At only the age of 20, Mia Wasikowska is already an actress I look forward to seeing more of. She holds your attention whenever she's on the screen, and downplays the part to perfection. Despite all the special effects and odd characters around her, she never gets carried away with it, and remains a much needed emotional anchor. The rest of the cast is made up of fine and capable actors who either do what they can with the roles, or completely disappear, leaving no impression whatsoever. One sad victim of his underwritten character is the priceless Alan Rickman, who provides the voice of the talking Blue Caterpillar. There's nothing wrong with his performance, really, it just comes across as a glorified cameo that never really sticks out. He reads his lines quite well, but the character itself is so underwritten and used so rarely, you can't help but think his talents would have been better suited somewhere else.

Alice will no doubt enjoy a healthy opening weekend, but will it have staying power? That's hard to judge. The movie's a little too slow, and sometimes dark and violent for very young kids, and there's not a lot here for adults to grasp. Thinking back on the movie, I think I've figured out the core problem. The characters that Alice encounters on her adventure look and act odd, but they are not memorable. We stare at them quizzically for a few moments, then get used to them much sooner than we should. The characters of Lewis Carroll deserved better.

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