Movie review: Alice in Wonderland

by Alex Bentley

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It's Tim Burton + Johnny Depp -- what could go wrong? Well...

Director Tim Burton and Johnny Depp have now worked together seven times (including Burton's last four films), and each collaboration has been seemingly more wacked out than the last (which, believe it or not, is a compliment). So you know going into Alice in Wonderlandthat you're in for some trippy stuff, not least because the source material lends itself so well to psychedelic visions.

Of course, this is also Tim Burton/Johnny Depp via Disney, so exactly how far out would it go? This Alice is not exactly a straight-up adaptation. Burton and screenwriter Linda Woolverton (The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast) have taken elements of both Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass to give a sense of familiarity to a brand-new story. In this tale, Alice (Mia Wasikowska) is in her late teens and about to fall victim to the British aristocratic social scene. It has been all-but-decided that she will marry Hamish (Leo Bill), a lord for whom she has no affection.

Desperate to avoid his impending proposal, she follows a vision of the White Rabbit (voice of Michael Sheen) and, naturally, falls down a rabbit hole. From there, the film takes you through all the recognizable touchstones of the stories, with the twist that Alice is supposedly experiencing all of them for the second time (having done them as a young child), though she has no memory of those events.

Thus, she drinks a potion (labeled “Drink Me) that shrinks her, eats a cake (labeled “Eat Me”) that makes her grow larger than normal, follows a disappearing Cheshire cat (Stephen Fry) to a now-dilapidated tea party with the Mad Hatter (Depp) and others, and joins the side of the White Queen (Anne Hathaway) in a fight against the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter), with the combatants including the Red Queen's living playing cards and the White Queen's living chess pieces. Other familiar characters she encounters include Tweedledum and Tweedledee (both played by Matt Lucas), the Knave of Hearts (Crispin Glover), and the Blue Caterpillar (Alan Rickman).

Much of the appeal of this Alice will (and should) be the visuals. Once Alice goes down the rabbit hole, the eye candy is almost never-ending, especially in 3D (like, seeing it in 3D is the only way to go). Burton and his staff have done an amazing job of making every bit of Wonderland (or, as the inhabitants call it, “Underland”) a wonder to see. Much has been made of the Mad Hatter's unruly bright orange hair and alien-looking eyes (and rightly so), but not a second goes by before something equally enthralling passes by. In fact, it's almost too much; unlike Avatar where you could just sit back and take in the general beauty of the scene before you, Alice might require multiple viewings to truly appreciate the level of detail the filmmakers have put up on screen.

That said, the story does not match up to the scenery. Despite some good performances, there is little emotional connection to be had with any of the characters. The plot basically boils down to good vs. evil, but Burton never creates any sense of suspense or intrigue. The imagery and line readings by various actors are often enchanting (Wasikowska and Rickman make the best impressions), but somehow that doesn't translate over to the film as a whole. It appears that Burton and Woolverton spent so much time concentrating on the Alice minutiae that they forgot to include a compelling plot.

If that's not enough, they also let their two main stars (with apologies to Wasikowska, that would be Depp and Bonham Carter) run wild with almost no attention paid to making them understandable. Depp sometimes slips into a Scottish brogue, making anything he says unintelligible. Meanwhile, Bonham Carter talks so quickly most of the time that she might as well be speaking another language. Speaking of, I often wished for subtitles when the characters referred to different things in Underland – I still have no idea how to spell the name of the day on which the film's climax takes place.

It's hard to see how Burton went wrong with Alice in Wonderland when the source material seemed to be right up his alley, but it most certainly misses the mark. Despite containing more than a few moments of brilliance, the lack of a good story dooms it in the end.

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