Review: Alice in Wonderland

Unlike what you may have read, Alice (Mia Wasikowska) is a 19-year old woman about to be forced into a socially beneficial but loveless marriage. When she follows the White Rabbit (voice by Michael Sheen) down the rabbit hole and into Wonderland (or Underland), it's as much to escape from the reality of her current situation as it is to pique her curiosity. Once in Wonderland, she is greeted with interest by the likes of the Cheshire Cat (voice by Stephen Fry) and the Blue Caterpillar (voice of Alan Rickman), characters she has met before but has no recollection of. Ruled by the head-hunting, tantrum-throwing Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter), Wonderland is enduring dark times, waiting for Alice to return and fulfil her prophecy to slay the Queen’s monstrous pet, Jabberwocky (voice by Christopher Lee). Alice also encounters the eccentric Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp), and the White Queen (Anne Hathaway), the perhaps equally vain, but far more even-tempered estranged sister of the Red Queen, looking to restore order to Wonderland.

 

Weirdo director Tim Burton (“Batman”, “Mars Attacks!”, “Sleepy Hollow”, “Ed Wood”) divided audiences with his ‘reimagining’ of “Planet of the Apes”. I mostly liked it, but he then made an absolute cock-up of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”. When I first saw the trailer for this 2009 adaptation of the Lewis Carroll classic, I was a bit worried. It looked garish and self-consciously weird, just like “Charlie”. Thankfully, Burton mostly gets it right this time. Even when the film is weird and odd-looking, well so was the original story at times. Burton’s found a fairly good fit here and hasn’t over-indulged in weirdness just for the sake of it, the vision matches the story being told.

 

The one thing Burton does get wrong is in the prologue, and it prevents the film from being anything great. Burton seems to think Carroll’s story needed a revamp. Um, no Tim. It’s a classic. Just tell the story, it works fine. We start with a lame, warped “Pride and Prejudice” opener with Alice a young adult about to be forcibly married to a stuffy suitor, before she chases the White Rabbit down a hole and into Wonderland. Again. Yes, Alice has apparently been there before, only she doesn’t remember it. What? This is not only a totally unnecessarily complicated opener but...did Burton even understand the whole point of Carroll’s original story? Alice was escaping her boring life and heading off to Wonderland, so why did Burton feel the need to pad the opening out even further? I mean, that just deprives us of the magic and wonderment even longer! True, Alice is a bit of a boring character (and as in the “Narnia” books, Alice is merely the audience’s substitute or POV into the magical world) and Burton has tried to give her a bit more substance, but it doesn’t work. It’s a bit dull, as is Alice.

 

Thankfully we eventually do get Alice’s journey down the rabbit hole, and the scene is a doozy, and after that, things are pretty smooth sailing for the most part. Tweedledum and Tweedledee (both played by Matt Lucas) are pretty funny and genuinely good CGI creations, I can only imagine how murky they would look in 3D, but in 2D they’re great fun and actually awfully cute and cuddly. I never thought I’d say that about Matt Lucas but there you go. Oh, and giant CGI hound dogs are awesome. They just are. Meanwhile, in the rather frivolous role of the Blue Caterpillar, Alan Rickman shows yet again that he had one of the best voices in all of cinema. The best casting though, is Helena Bonham-Carter, whom I used to loathe, but as the enormously vain Red Queen she’s a bee’s dick away from being pitch-perfect. I could’ve used a little more screaming harpy in her ‘Off with her head!’ line reading, but otherwise she’s a hoot from her opening scene. ‘I love a warm pig belly for my aching feet’ the rather petulant ruler says as, yes, a little piggy trots along to act as her own personal foot rest. The visual of a CGI-aided Bonham-Carter’s enlarged head on a tiny body is just priceless, and the pettiness and slight bi-polar nature of her character gives us some of the film’s most amusing moments. I also rather liked Burton’s somewhat demonic take on the Queen’s army, not quite what I’m used to having grown up on the animated Disney version! Elsewhere, as the creepy, insidious and love struck Knave, the uber-weird Crispin Glover echoes a youngish Christopher Lee as Rochefort in “The Three Musketeers” (he even has an eye patch, this one with a heart!). His best moment is when he coos to the enlarged Alice ‘I like...largeness’.

 

In the all-important role of the Mad Hatter, Johnny Depp certainly looks loopy with his carrot-coloured hair and creepy eyes and teeth. It’s a much better performance from him than as Willy Wonka, but he’s strangely not all that interesting, seemingly a heretical thing to say about Depp. He’s not bad but I’m so used to him being an absolute show-stopper (for better or worse) and here he isn’t. He’s…fine I guess? Aussie actress Wasikowska similarly lets her ethereal visage do most of the work as Alice, a not very interesting performance. On the other hand, Stephen Fry is spot-on as the voice of the sly, slinky Cheshire Cat, who always looks like he knows a secret you don’t know and is thoroughly enjoying it. Christopher Lee’s booming voice adds a lot of gravitas to the monstrous Jabberwocky/Jabberwock, and the entrance of this character is a grand one indeed.

 

Some scoff at the notion of Alice as Warrior Princess in the second half of the film, but with Alice, The Queen of Hearts, and the White Queen, we have three strong women in a big motion picture, and despite my misgivings about the prologue, I like the strength of these female characters. The big battle is enjoyable, though admittedly there are a few “Narnia” similarities in it. Still, it’s entertaining, just like the film itself.

 

I’m not entirely certain what kids will make of Burton’s skewed vision and it’s something I always wonder about his non-adult oriented pictures, though I don’t think he’s crossed the line into self-indulgent unpleasant weirdness like he did with “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”. I do think, though that the Disney animated version is still the screen’s definitive version. By the way, Depp’s dancing at the end is either the greatest thing he’s ever done on film, or the worst. Maybe both. It’s certainly...something.

 

This is warped, weird, but mostly a good romp from a well-suited filmmaker and a mostly good cast. If only it didn’t feature a grown-up Alice! Terrific music score by frequent Burton composer Danny Elfman (“Batman”, “Planet of the Apes”, “Mars Attacks”) sets the right tone for the film. The screenplay by Linda Woolverton (Disney’s “The Lion King” and “Beauty and the Beast”) is from Carroll’s two works about Alice’s adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.

 

Rating: B-