"Alice in Wonderland" Movie Review (2010)

Movie Review

“Alice in Wonderland”

Directed by Tim Burton, written by Linda Woolverton, 108 minutes, rated PG.

By Christopher Smith

The new Tim Burton movie, “Alice: Struck Down by Banality,” (sorry) “Alice: What a God Awful Bore Your Movie Is” (sorry, let’s try this again), “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore”--(okay, fine)--“Alice in Wonderland,” is presented in 3-D, which is ironic because the movie itself lacks dimension.

Linda Woolverton based the script from Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking-Glass,” and she’s updated the story to feature Alice not as a child caught in another world, but as a 19-year-old young woman (Mia Masikowska) seeking to escape the possible ruins of a bad marriage to a toothy young fellow suffering from irritable bowel syndrome.

And that’s only one of the ways the story has been updated. Since Alice is being pressured into a marriage she wants no part of, this curious girl with the pale skin and the concealed pluck takes flight from the situation when a rabbit (voice of Michael Sheen) catches her eye. She chases after it and falls down a rabbit hole into another world called Underworld.

But is this Alice that Alice? Many want to know, including Dormouse (Barbara Windsor), March Hare (Paul Whitehouse), Tall Flower Faces (Imelda Staunton), Absolem the Caterpillar (Alan Rckman), and Tweedledee and Tweedledum (Matt Lucas). All have their doubts that she is that she save for the one person who knows that this is the Alice of their memories. That person is Mad Hatter (“It’s you! It’s absolutely Alice--I’d know him anywhere”), who is played by Johnny Depp in a performance he obviously was game to play, so it’s a shame that the script didn’t play back.

The movie is colorful and colorless, with Burton tossing so much at the screen as he parades through the theme park that is 3-D--which does nothing to enhance the movie--that this usually terrific director misses his mark by forgetting to tell the sort of unforgettable story audiences have come to expect from him. There is mold all over this “Alice,” and while some of it features the brightest of greens, a lot of it is predictably grim, but not in the way that Burton fans have come to savor.

About the story. Since the last time we saw Alice, the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter in the movie’s only memorable performance) is taking on her sister, the White Queen (Anne Hathaway, miscast), in a battle royale that is offing its share of heads as the Red Queen presses on with her quest for power. With her bobble head wrapped in ropes of red hair, she goes for it, which causes all sorts of problems, all of which Alice finds herself in the middle of, with the crazed Mad Hatter among others as her guide.

Of course, the whole idea of Alice’s presumed hallucination is for her to go to war with her own psyche and come away a stronger person (Dorothy, anyone?), one who, for instance, could walk away from an arranged marriage to a farting old lord. Whether she finds that fortitude, we’ll leave for you, but getting there is a struggle, so much so that it literally involves a battle against the Red Queen’s army (Joan of Arc, anyone?). Unfortunately, what we’re left with is a predictable coming-of-age tale.

While just that might be all the rage in popular culture--one only has to turn to the “Harry Potter” and “Twilight” movies to find the exclamation points--it doesn’t quite work here. The emotional arc competes with the film’s lack of structure, something Carroll himself faced in his own writing. How he overcame it was with wit, satire and imagination, and so while on paper you’d think that his mind would be perfect for Burton to tap, it oddly isn’t. Something went missing in the translation.

Grade: C-

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