A Reel Review: ALICE IN WONDERLAND

This latest rendition of ALICE IN WONDERLAND is Tim Burton’s attempted masterpiece of craftsmanship, held together with scotch tape and Popsicle sticks instead of nails and wood. Using Lewis Carroll’s novels as a merely a backdrop for his dark and whimsical vision, ALICE is a dull film that is occasionally cute to look at, but is overall ineffective and dull.

Alice (Mia Wasikowska), now in her twenties, falls back into the hole leading to Underland, a magical world she once visited as a young girl, but has little to no memory of. The world is now ruled by the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter, in her 5,000th Burton film), who has devastated the once lush and beautiful landscape. Hooking up with old pals in the form of the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp, in his 5,001st Burton film), the Chesire Cat (Stephen Fry) and the looney-tunes-looking Blue Caterpillar (Alan Rickman), Alice reluctantly looks to restore Underland back to its rightful rule under the White Queen (Anne Hathaway), all while fulfilling her prophesized destiny of slaying the wicked Jabberwocky.

As stated, this Wonderland serves merely as a backdrop and playground for Burton, who doesn’t give us a straight-up adaptation, but more of an alternate tale of what would have happened if a grown-up Alice came back (HOOK, anyone?). It’s not a horrible idea, but Alice’s character doesn’t develop deep enough and never seems to feel any dread or longing to get away from this bizarre place and back home. The storyline is a fresh take on a tale seen a million times over, and it does have teeth at times, but the overall script lets it fall into just another big-budget retread that is bland and predictable.

Burton has always had an excellent eye for striking a perfect balance between dark and whimsical, and here he leans more towards dark. The storyline of an Underland falling into ruin gives him a pass to avoid a Disney-like design and lean towards his trademark bleakness. In this forum it works, but it’s sure to anger many purists loyal to the source material. The CGI work is cartoonish at best, and nothing is convincing or jawdropping. The lack of practical filmmaking leaves things feeling heartless.

Wasikowska looks and feels right as Alice, but is lost amongst the overused green-screen. Depp succeeds as the Hatter, and he mugs and rambles away in front of the camera seemingly on his own with no direction. Hathaway doesn’t do much as the White Queen, but carries what she has to do well. The voice talents are the real stars, with Rickman and Fry getting the best lines and what laughs there are here. Probably the nicest touch is Christopher Lee’s short but sweet work as the voice of the Jabberwocky. His unmistakable pipes are a nice touch to a CGI-overloaded creature with little dread.

Probably suffering the most from the thin script is Bonham-Carter’s Red Queen. Manipulated by CGI to give her an XL head, she looks and feels the part, but there is no dread or malice coming out of the character other than saying “off with his/her head” every other scene. She’s an uninteresting villain that no one would care how she may meet her end or morality lesson.

Younger audiences will be drawn to the film courtesy of the talking animals and wildly colorful palette. Older audiences (anyone over 13), will walk away un-entertained and looking for a bit more. It would have been interesting to have seen Burton attempt this film during his BEETLE JUICE years, where the lack of crap CGI would have kept him grounded with more attention paid to character and script. ALICE is not a disaster, but is far from a stroke of genius.

BOTTOM LINE: Rent it.