Tim Burton hasn’t made a good film in ten years and that’s if you like “Sleepy Hollow” (which this writer does) but you’d have to go way back to 1994’s “Ed Wood” to find the director’s last truly great film which, and after watching his work since then and over the past decade leading up to the forthcoming release of “Alice In Wonderland” we’re beginning to think that one was a fluke.
Now before the fanboys get their claws out, bear in mind that this writer was so enamored with the director in his early years, he even bought Burton’s book “The Melancholy Death Of Oyster Boy & Other Stories.” In that nascent era, Burton was something refreshingly different in Hollywood, bringing an uniquely gothic, sardonic eye in the era of self-serious indies and bloated, star-laden tentpoles.
But then something happened that turned the formerly visionary Burton into a contemporary George Lucas. We think he started getting a taste of the lucrative licensing deals from “The Nightmare Before Christmas” (which, being re-released every Halloween and spawning lots of crappy related merchandise must provide a nice healthy bonus each year). Why else has he spent so much time on empty franchise projects like “The Planet Of The Apes,” “Charlie & The Chocolate Factory” and yes, “Alice In Wonderland” or even “Corpse Bride” which, while passable, was really just an attempt to mimic the success of “The Nightmare Before Before Christmas”? Of course, it’s all speculation, but from a director who once directed a biopic about the worst filmmaker of all time and wrote beguiling rhymes about warped characters he dreamed up, Burton seems to have fallen, a long long way from the guy who was desperate to put his own wickedly grim visions on the big screen.
“Alice In Wonderland” finds the director at the nadir of his career. This latest CGI-3D monstrosity from Disney is a Burton film in name only. If you’re walking in expecting any of his flourishes to be found in the renderings of Wonderland, in the characters or even in the dialogue, think again. This is Burton as we’ve never seen him before, clearly directing an easy paycheck gig for kids, and even going so far as to nauseatingly brand Disney throughout the film by making the Red and White Queen castles pretty much exact replicas of the Magic Kingdom. No joke. The film is visually uninspired, the 3D clearly an afterthought and really, its about as minimally “wondrous” we ever would’ve imagined a modern “Alice In Wonderland” to be.
For all you Lewis Carrol purists out there, “Alice In Wonderland” actually isn’t a direct adaptation at all. Instead, the film is a mashup of both “Alice In Wonderland” and “Through The Looking Glass,” with a bit of a creative spin. In the film, the audience is introduced to a much older Alice, who on the verge of being married, tumbles again down the rabbit hole and encounters all the same people she did when she was younger (ie. in the books), and has to save the kingdom once again from the Red Queen restoring power to her sister, the White Queen.
The first third or even roughly half the film, are multiple extended chase sequences back-to-back. When Alice (Mia Wasikowska) first arrives in Wonderland, there is some doubt by the White Rabbit, Tweedledee and Tweedledum, Dormouse and Ambrose, the blue caterpillar as to whether she is the “right” Alice. Alice herself seems to think she’s in a strangely familiar dream, and also thinks they got the wrong person.
However, it isn’t long until the reigning Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter) gets wind that Alice has returned, and as its been foretold that she will be defeated by Alice, the Red Queen sends Stayne, the Knave Of Hearts (Crispin Glover) to get her. So Alice spends the early part of the picture fleeing Stayne, fleeing the Bandersnatch as well as Bayard (a dog who follows the Red Queen’s orders as she has his wife and pups imprisoned). Anyhow, along the way she meets Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp) who clearly knows she’s the “right” Alice and puts her on the path towards the sword she’ll need to slay the Jabberwock, as its the only way the Red Queen’s hold over the population will be diminished.
If this all sounds fairly standard, well it is, and that’s one of the biggest problems with the film. Screenwriter Linda Woolverton (“Beauty & The Beast,” “The Lion King”) attempts to stuff Carroll’s books into the familiar quest-leads-to-life-lessons structure of so many other films, and it’s completely the wrong approach. Carroll’s eccentricities need to be embraced, especially for a film that’s going to be utilizing CGI and 3D not smoothed over. Nothing about this film ever feels magical or even involving. The film jumps quickly from plot point to plot point, almost like a video game, as Alice meets the people she needs to, and gathers what she needs to fulfill her quest. In fact, the film makes Alice’s supposed adventure such a non-issue that Bayard being reunited with his wife and puppies was far more exciting than anything that she accomplishes.
And we would be willing to overlook some of this if the animation or performances were engaging, but they’re simply not. Visually, “Alice In Wonderland” is a bore. Close your eyes and imagine how you would animate an “Alice In Wonderland” movie and that’s pretty much what you get. Burton, who at his best can be such an intriguingly visual filmmaker seems more than content to play to the most boring concepts of what these characters should look and act like. However, even that maybe could’ve been overlooked if any of the performers had decided to show up.
Coming off worst of all is Mrs. Burton (Bonham Carter). Her husband seems to have given her one screen direction — screechy — and she spends the entire picture shaping her evil queen around the single characteristic of her begin some kind of voice hybrid of Roseanne Barr and Megan Mulally constantly yelling “Off with their heads!” to the point where the words lose all meaning. Faring not much better is Johnny Depp, who needs to take a long moratorium on Playing English. Here, he adds a considerably irritating lisp to try and change things up and weirdly, at certain times when he becomes angry, a Scottish brogue. It’s Wacky Depp on cruise control, and it’s a snooze.
And Burton seems to let the rest of the cast play one note as well. Glover is particularly lost as the Knave, wavering between sniveling and conniving and the odd animation, which has his lanky character walking around like he has a constant wedgie, doesn’t help. Anne Hathaway was seemingly told to keep her arms up in the air at all times, as she glides around in her role as the angel pure White Queen who is so inoffensively forgettable, we thought she was going to float right off the screen.
If anyone walks away from the film intact it’s Mia Wasikowska and she’s the only one who prevents the film from entering trainwreck territory. She’s imbues the character with a necessary strength, and a touch of vulnerability that feels real and honest. She matches her older, more experienced acting peers toe-to-toe and is never anything but the center of the picture, which is an accomplishment for a new actress leading a big, expensive tentpole film. In addition, Stephen Fry as the Chesire Cat is a pure delight and the film definitely picks up whenever he’s around.
However, those performances aside, for a film with Burton and Depp at the wheel, it’s a major disappointment. While their past (and particularly earlier) projects have yielded some creatively intriguingly work, with each successive film where the budget and box office stakes have been raised, they’ve played things safer and safer, to the point where in “Alice In Wonderland” it’s to the degree of being cold porridge bland. The duo, who found in each other like minded creative impulses in the early trio of films “Edward Scissorhands,” “Ed Wood” and “Sleepy Hollow” no longer seem inspired by each other. Depp has brought his more outlandish tendencies to other films, most notably, “The Pirates Of The Caribbean” franchise while Burton just plainly seems to have lost his creative drive. While talk of the duo joining forces again for “Dark Shadows” later this year, we would strongly suggest that they both take a break from each other. Those juices are spent, the magic is just no longer there.
We’ve been reading rumors than Disney wants to rush this to DVD (hence the shortened theatrical window) because they think they have a turkey on their hands. And while the film is not that bad, it is a tonally off, strangely unengaging misfire from top to bottom. For a potential franchise (and yes, there is a crack left open to allow for a sequel) it’s simply inconsequential. There is nothing here that we see audiences wanting to return to for a second round, which is probably scarier to Disney executives than anything Carroll, Depp or Burton could ever dream up. [C-]
