“But of course it doesn’t,” is perhaps the only appropriate response to a complaint that Alice in Wonderland doesn’t really make any sense. Fair enough—and your enjoyment of the movie as a story is going to greatly depend on how cool you are with director Tim Burton and screenwriter Linda Woolverton taking full advantage of Lewis Carroll in slipping loose the manacles of narrative and coherence.
One key point to know going in is that Alice in Wonderland is not simply a live-action version of the 1951 Disney animated film. It is actually more of a live-action sequel, though one where Alice does not actually remember her first trip to Wonderland and so the specifics of those events aren’t particularly relevant.
Alice (Mia Wasikoska), in the real world, is now nearly 20 years old, and her mother is about to marry her off to the dorky Lord Hamish (Leo Bill). It appears that is because her doting father, who understands her eccentricities, has recently died. Apparently her mother, who isn’t otherwise shown to be a bad person, doesn’t care at all what she wants. At her surprise engagement party (the surprise is the engagement and not the party), Alice takes the sighting of a well-dressed rabbit as an opportunity to escape the pressure to say yes, and of course ends up falling down a rabbit hole.
It turns out that the rabbit had been intentionally seeking Alice out, hoping to get her back to Wonderland. The Red Queen has vanquished (though apparently not very much) the White Queen and the only hope is for Alice to recover the vorpal blade (the movie offers no more explanation of why this sword is special than did Carroll in Through the Looking Glass) and vanquish the Jabberwocky. In other words, this is an Alice in Wonderland sequel for people who really felt the first one just didn’t have enough fight scenes
While the pointlessness of the third act battle scene is the big flaw of the movie, the first two acts also have a significant issue: redundancy. The beauty of Alice not remembering the events of the first story is that Tim Burton can pick and choose his favorites and re-create them in semi-live-action form in his new movie. So we get Alice figuring out how to get out of through the small parlor door when she lands in Wonderland again. We get another tea party. We get the Queen playing croquet with flamingos and hedgehogs. We get the Caterpillar smoking a hookah and being enigmatic (though it is worth it just to hear Alan Rickman’s voice visually expressed so perfectly). The result is a sense that Burton is trying to have his cake—the benefits of scene familiarity—and eat it too by being able to change whatever he wanted and declare, “It’s not a remake!”
The flaws in the story are, mostly, redeemed by the visuals and live performances. This Alice in Wonderland is almost nearly as fully a creation of animation as the 1951 Alice in Wonderland and as a result is hardly any less whimsical. It is only because the digital manipulations of the human form are so well done (for example, Johnny Depp’s Mad Hatter eyes are enlarged, Helena Bonham Carter’s Red Queen body is greatly diminished in relation to her head, Crispin Glover’s eye-patched Stayne is lengthened) that the occasional lapse in quality is so stark. For some reason Bayard (a bloodhound voiced by Timothy Spall) and the Jabberwocky (Christopher Plummer) seem to have been animated for a different movie, but almost everything else is top notch and it is the little details in the background that will reward repeat viewing if you’re so inclined.
It is tempting to imagine what this movie would have been if made two years from now after having absorbed the new CGI standards established by Avatar, but that is hardly fair to it now.
From the performers, it is Helena Bonham Carter who steals the show as the Red Queen. She gets most of the good lines and it is through her thoughtless abuse of those around her that greatest of the sight gags are developed. Mia Wasikowska as Alice is a bit of an odd duck, but she grew into the character as the movie progressed—though she is done a great disservice by the movie’s lame real-word bookends. Anne Hathaway is strikingly beautiful as the White Queen, with eyes and a smile so naturally large it is unclear whether she was given the same treatment as Depp.
The voice cast is filled with great voices, from the already mentioned Rickman, Spall, and Plummer to Michael Sheen (White Rabbit), Barbara Windsor (Dormouse), and Matt Lucas (Tweedledee and Tweedledum). Stephen Fry is wonderful as Cheshire Cat, who is also fantastically animated and ends up being the most magical and surreal of the characters, a tone that would have well served the movie if it has been spread throughout.
Johnny Depp’s orange-haired Mad Hatter seems to be getting the lion’s share of attention, and he’s fine in this role. The problem is that he’s gone to the well of off-kilter visually odd characters so often that it really doesn’t have any impact. His career has led him to this place where the Mad Hatter feels rote, as if this is what you get if Willie Wonka were to go entirely off his medication.
That roteness is pretty much the summation for the movie as a whole. There’s nothing horribly wrong with it, and every once in a while it does something wonderfully right—but somehow the combination of Lewis Carroll and Tim Burton ends up being less than the sum of the parts.
It is always helpful when a movie provides its own summation, and that happens when the Caterpillar tells Alice that she is not Alice but rather “almost Alice.” That pretty well described the movie. It is hard to imagine this new take becoming a cherished classic (though I’ve been wrong about Burton’s work in the past), but it is a perfectly acceptable effort.
Alice in Wonderland is a Walt Disney Pictures release:
- Wide release on Friday, March 5, 2010.
- Directed by Tim Burton.
- Written by Linda Woolverton.
- Starring Mia Wasikowska, Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Crispin Glover, Anne Hathaway, Timothy Spall, Stephen Fry.
- Rated PG for fantasy action/violence involving scary images and situations, and for a smoking caterpillar..
- Running time 108 minutes.
- Alex’s rating: 6 out of 10.
