Lewis Carroll’s surreal and absurd “Alice in Wonderland” returns to the cinema, helmed this time by the equally surreal and absurd Tim Burton. The alternatively whimsical and creepy charms of the novel and animated Disney film aren’t matched by Burton’s self-referential interpretation of the story, however. Like his 2005 remake of Roald Dahl’s “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” Burton tries to draw out the darker elements of story, but only serves to make them seem ridiculous.
The story takes place when Alice is 19, and believes that the Wonderland of the original Disney movie was a dream. She stumbles back down the rabbit hole after running away from a marriage proposal from a square and obnoxious suitor. In the opening scenes, we see her in Austenian, 19th-century England, attending a society party for her own engagement-to-be, with a predictable crew of stuck-up, dull Brits who just don’t get that Alice isn’t like them: she’s not weird, she’s imaginative and fantastical!
Her character might have been more likeable had Mia Wasikowska, who plays her, not looked as if she was consumptive throughout the film (as most of Burton’s heroines do –– but they usually have a good deal more darkness to them than Alice).
We see flashbacks where Alice asks her father if she is mad; he tells her she is, but “all the best people are.” This seems to be the central theme of Burton’s oeuvre, from Edward Scissorhands onwards: weird is more interesting. And he’s usually right, except with Alice, who is much more boring than the film would like us to believe. The exaggerated characters that surround her throw into relief her lack of actual personality.
It would be one thing if she were intended to be an innocent and perfectly normal girl thrown into a bizarre world, but, like the Avril Lavigne song that plays in the credits, Alice tries to be alternative but ends up bland and moderately annoying. Her mission is to kill Jabberwocky, the Red Queen’s dragon, and restore Underland to the White Queen (Anne Hathaway), its rightful leader. There is a protracted fight scene at the end of the film that is visually evocative of a video game version of “The Chronicles of Narnia.”
Johnny Depp plays the Mad Hatter, who looks like Willy Wonka after years of homelessness and hallucinogenic drug abuse. His mannerisms and speech affectations would be delightful and inspired if he hadn’t used variations on them in “Chocolate Factory” and the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies. Depp is an excellent actor and a seemingly perfect fit for the Mad Hatter, but we’ve seen him play effeminate and insane before. Helena Bonham-Carter, Burton’s other half and other most frequent collaborator, is the most entertaining character in the movie as the Red Queen, the controlling and deeply insecure despot of Underland — the mystical world that Alice mistakes for Wonderland as a child. She is given all the best lines in the movie, and her repartee with the Hatter is perfect: “What a regrettably large head you have!” she tells him while in her custody and under threat of having his head chopped off.
But, like Depp, Bonham-Carter isn’t exactly a stranger to playing this character type (file under “Shrieking Harpy”).
Underland itself is alternatively beautiful and garishly creepy, as it should be. Its lurid colours stand out in contrast to Alice’s pastel England. Tim Burton’s strength has always been his visual creativity, and though he brings his own touch to Carroll’s world here, he doesn’t allow it to be quite as macabre as Sweeney Todd’s London or his most inspired creation, The Nightmare Before Chritsmas’s Halloweentown — probably because Disney financed the production of this supposedly family-targeted fare (this also explains the above-mentioned Avril Lavigne infliction). The addition of an action-adventure element into the plot also somewhat compromises the story: it’s about discovery, not conflict, and Alice isn’t a warrior princess — although her haute couture Joan of Arc armor is fantastic.
The recent retrospective on Tim Burton at the Museum of Modern Art was a testament to his striking originality and specific vision, but what he’s creating now seems to be a diluted memory of his best works. His most memorable and impressive stories and worlds are the ones he writes himself. Perhaps it’s time to move on from the adaptations of adaptations.
The Reel Critic - 03/10/10
Comments
