Review: Alice in Wonderland

I was bored to tears watching Alice in Wonderland.

Actually no, I was bored two years ago when it was announced that Tim Burton was directing Alice in Wonderland and that it would star Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter. It's just so obvious and so maddeningly predictable that you wonder why bother? As early artwork found it's way onto the internet it landed with a dull thud, looking exactly what you might expect; pretty, quirky and gothic, neither moving you nor turning you off. Then as Disney's marketing machine began it became apparent that there was no Ace up the sleeve, that this would indeed be exactly what it looked like. Plenty of Johnny Depp mugging, Danny Elfman's score and the aforemenioned quirkyness.

It physically pains me to think that plenty of Johnny Depp and Tim Burton is a negative these days, but so help me it's true. It's difficult to remember a time when the thought of these two on a new project was something to celebrate. What was once a sure fire recipe for innovation and originality is now so repetitive it's just irritating. Anyone thinking Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was just an unfortunate hiccup will be disappointed. As much as that film was a failure it doesn't come close to depths that Alice sinks. The film is a complete mess. From conception to execution it stumbles on almost every level, starting with the bizarre to decision to make this a sequel, with Alice returning to Wonderland as an adult.

The film opens with a young Alice suffering recurring nightmares of odd worlds and grinning cats. Seven years later and a grown Alice has been thrust into high society awaiting a proposal from a quaffed beurk. Breaking free she spots a waistcoated White Rabbit and pursues it down the fateful rabbit hole where she finds a table with a key and a mysterious bottle of liquid labeled "Drink Me".

Sound familiar? It should, because while the film would have you believe this is a sequel of sorts, once Alice is in Wonderland the film plays out exactly as the original story did with characters doing and saying what they did in the original. Add to that the fact that Alice can't remember being in Wonderland (or Underland as it is known here) and has to be reintroduced and you may find yourself scratching your head wondering what the thought process was. It's an utterly baffling descision and it backfires enormously. A lot of the dialogue in the early scenes are taken directly from Lewis Carrol's own prose but for the rest of the film screenwriter Linda Woolverton's just cannot match Carrol's words. Even for someone unfamiliar with the original books it is painfully clear where Carrol ends and Woolverton begins. The effect is just distracting and I'm astonished nobody in production noticed it.

As perculiar as the first hour of Alice is though, it is in the third act that the wheels fall off completely.

Tim Burton and Linda Woolverton clearly enjoyed The Chronicles of Narnia and decided that what was missing from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was an epic battle. After all the introductions are complete Alice learns that "Underland" needs a champion to defeat the Red Queen and slay The Jabberwocky. The famous nonsense poem that Carrol wrote as a parody designed to show how not to write a poem has been taken completely literally and it's the final nail in coffin. The whole sequence is the antithesis of what Alice in Wonderland is about. It's the punchline to a joke about how Hollywood murders literary works. It's the laziest possible way to create a climax and all it serves to do is highlight the creative brickwall that Burton and Woolverton ran into.

Performances vary, ironically the best work comes from the smaller roles. Stephen Fry and Alan Rickman giving brilliant voice work as the Cheshire Cat and The Caterpillar respectively, but they are little more than cameos, characters inserted into this "sequel" because people would expect to see them in an Alice in Wonderland film. Anne Hathaway does good work bringing a welcome otherworldliness to The White Queen. Helena Bonham Carter apes Miranda Richardson's Queenie from Blackadder as the Red Queen (or is that Queen of Hearts, the film seems to think they are the same character) the effect is comical but robs the film of a villain and so the already weak third act has no threat.

Of course the focus is on Depp and disappointingly the marketing wasn't misleading, the Mad Hatter has indeed been thrust to the forefront of the story. Depp isn't bad in the role, it's just a terrible role and a ghastly interpretation of the character. He and Burton decided that The Hatter needed an origin story, a sword fight and a breakdancing scene. I'll repeat that last bit for you, a breakdancing sequence. It just further cements the feeling that no one involved understood Wonderland or it's characters, either that or nobody cared.

As a long time fan of Tim Burton the most frustrating part about Alice is that at times you will be reminded of what the director is capable of. On a purely aesthetic level Wonderland is impressive but an over abundance of CGI dulls the effect. I've never thought that Burton's style was well suited to CGI. His imagery looks far more impressive when acheived practically. Take for example the Red Queen's mansion; a grand sweeping shot pans over the enormous CGI Castle and through a garden filled with CGI hedge sculptures, compare it to an almost identical shot from Burton's beautiful Edward Scissorhands. In Edward Scissorhands the sequence is haunting and dazzling, in Alice it is dull and soulless keeping you detached, much like the rest of the film.

All in all, there is very little to recommend here and the film feels like a wasted opportunity. I think Burton is capable of making a very worthy straightforward adaptation of Alice in Wonderland. There is a curious moment when Alice realises that she had been to Wonderland and we are treated to a flashback of sorts to Alice as a young girl in Wonderland, I found myself yearning to see that film, if some restraint had been shown maybe that would have a been a superior film. On the other hand perhaps if Burton had thrown caution completely to the wind and indulged his twisted imagination to create something akin to American McGee's Alice we may have had something special. As it stands we have a weak hybrid of the two. A film not content to be a straightforward adaptation but not confident enough to breakaway and do something unique.

It will take more than this for me to write off Burton completely, he is still a man with a brilliant imagination, but I do think he has lost his way. These adaptations are just not working and with each film released his earlier work seems further and further away. With any luck it's out of his system and his next project will see him return with something original and more intimate.

I'll leave you with his award winning short Vincent which I think perfectly encompasses what makes him such a unique talent.