Tim Burton takes a creative leap in this film adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s children’s classic by fusing it with the Jabberwocky poem, and forcing Alice into the role of a latter-day Joan of Arc. Violence and death are just the beginning of the creative remake as Burton gives the film an adult sensibility that doesn’t quite work. Johnny Depp is wonderful as the Mad Hatter, as is the rest of the cast, but this optically entertaining film is emotionally and spiritually anemic. At times, it’s just downright depressing.
Starring: Johnny Depp, Mia Wasikowska, Helena Bonham Carter, Anne Hathaway, Crispin Glover and Alan Rickman
Rating: Three stars out of five
Twas brillig. Not brilliant.
A strange mutant of a movie that ambitiously tries to ramp up the suspense factor of the surreal by fusing Lewis Carroll’s children’s classic Alice in Wonderland with his famed nonsense poem, "Jabberwocky," this Johnny Depp vehicle takes some torturous twists – without getting anywhere all that fantastic.
Perhaps the problem is expectation. The very notion of a Tim Burton adaptation of Lewis Carroll was enough to make any fan of either’s work ecstatic. Moreover, it seemed like a natural fit.
Carroll’s story pivots on a sense of the truly bizarre as it tells the story of a little girl named Alice who plummets down a rabbit hole and suddenly talks to clothed animals and a disappearing, grinning cat.
The story stretched the bounds of logic so successfully, it inspired an entire generation of psychedelic experimentation – not to mention the best song Jefferson Airplane ever recorded.
Burton’s movies also have a habit of playing tricks with the collective concept called reality, and they are firmly rooted in an adolescent – sometimes child-like – psyche.
This project, on the surface, seemed destined for great success. And for the first fifteen minutes, Burton sets a beautiful table as he takes us into a seamless recreation of Victorian society, where we meet a headstrong young girl named Alice who has a recurring nightmare of falling down a hole.
So far, so good, but Burton clearly wasn’t satisfied with a straight up film version of the tome – which is really just a succession of odd encounters more than a dramatically compelling narrative.
To compensate, Burton ages Alice and puts her in the same age demographic as his greatest screen heroes, from Edward Scissorhands to Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder in Beetlejuice).
On the very precipice of adulthood, Alice (Mia Wasikowska) finds herself in a panic when she attends a garden gathering, only to discover it’s her own engagement party. Unsure of what to do when the proposition comes, she flies off into the shrubs in pursuit of a white rabbit.
The minute she lands in Wonderland, things change – not just for Alice, but for the viewer wrapped in warm memories of a colourful, and largely benign universe populated by oddballs.
This is a decidedly grown-up version of Wonderland, where underlying themes of looming sexuality and physical transformation are pulled, dripping wet, up to the surface. In fact, at one point, we hear it’s not really even called Wonderland at all – but "Underland." Alice just made a mistake during her first visit as a child.
Now grown up and potent, Alice is a prophesied messiah: She is supposed to save the creatures of Wonderland from the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter) and her fierce weapon of mass destruction, the Jabberwock.
Maybe making a movie that doesn’t rely on a massive battle sequence at the end is too much to ask of a modern director working in digital 3-D, but watching Burton’s version of Wonderland devolve into a computer-assisted clash of armour feels like a complete betrayal.
Moreover, turning Alice into a latter-day version of Joan of Arc – surrounded by undeniably phallic imagery – might fit a grad student thesis on the creep factor in Carroll’s kiddie lit, but it’s bit too harsh and bleak to keep this movie squarely in the fun zone, where it really had to be.
Thanks to Johnny Depp’s committed embodiment of the Mad Hatter and Helena Bonham Carter’s fatheaded queen, there are several moments of giddiness where Burton and Carroll’s sensibilities mesh.
But really, was anyone expecting to watch Alice tread across a swamp filled with realistic corpses? Or see the Dormouse remove an eyeball from the Bandersnatch. Moreover, was anyone expecting to see a Bandersnatch in this movie at all?
Weaving Alice and "Jabberwocky" together might have felt like the perfect way to bring a little grown-up drama to the table, but they end up warping each other and compromise the inherent warmth and integrity of each piece.
The visuals are slick and creative, and Burton proves he’s got the best production design team in the business. He also scores big for casting Wasikowska in the lead. The young actor has so much presence, she handily carries the film for the duration – even though half of what she’s asked to do is change outfits, from small to big, and back again.
In the end, Burton’s Alice feels like squandered potential. The movie is optically entertaining but spiritually and emotionally anemic, despite full-blooded efforts from the gifted ensemble – and the digital engineers who successfully designed a Wonderland, but forgot to download its soul.
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