Tim Burton films have always been
weird—and sometimes annoyingly so—but never have the director’s
trademark oddities been as boring and mechanical as they are in
Alice in Wonderland. His take on the Lewis Carroll
fairy-tale is as provocative-in-concept-only as a tube of black
lipstick from Hot Topic. Walt Disney is putting out the movie
and, while it’s darker than the studio’s usual release, it’s
just as mass-market in terms of its lack of genuine substance.
The new story-bent in Burton’s
Alice is fine on its face, but goes nowhere. This time
around, Alice (Mia Wasikowska) is a 19-year-old who has been to
Wonderland many times before. At her engagement party, in which
she’s about to be forced to marry a twit she doesn’t like, she’s
lured down the infamous rabbit-hole by the White Rabbit (Michael
Sheen). Once in Wonderland, she meets the usual cast of
characters: the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp), Tweedledee and
Tweedledum (Matt Lucas), the Cheshire Cat (Stephen Fry), et
cetera. Alice is, as the story goes, expected to save Wonderland
from the wrath of the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter) and
restore the White Queen (Anne Hathaway) to power in a duel with
the Jabberwocky (Christopher Lee).
While visuals are the clear focus of
this Alice and Wonderland, the most immediately
noticeable feature is the acting. Why? Despite the distinguished
cast, the performances are wooden across the board. In the title
role, Mia Wasikowska disappoints in her utter blankness,
especially when one considers how strongly she burst onto the
scene last year in the indie That Evening Sun. As the
Mad Hatter, selling-point Johnny Depp comes off as more
incoherent than he does zany. Depp does a lot of mumbling and
not much else. (That is, unless you count the excruciating dance
number he delivers at the end of the film.) The extensive
voice-cast for the CGI creatures is equally unremarkable. If
there’s one standout, it’s Helena Bonham Carter as the Red
Queen, perhaps because she was able to better understand how to
turn (her husband) Burton’s general weirdness into a positive
rather than an outright bore. But the performances on the whole
match the updated story in terms of its emptiness.
As far as the visuals are concerned,
they appear expensive but not real pleasing, which is surprising
given they’re intended to be the main attraction of the film.
For the entire first act, everything looks extremely,
uninterestingly dull. Burton paints the picture using washed-out
hues to highlight the idea that the outskirts of Wonderland
(where our heroes lie) have been shunned by the Red Queen, whose
Kingdom is by contrast vibrant. But after ten minutes of staring
at the admittedly artistic, but joyless images, the viewer is
tempted to get up and scream “I get it! But I came for the
brand-new, CGI-filled Alice in Wonderland—show me some
color!” Brightness finally fills the frame when we meet the Red
Queen, but these scenes are too little, too late. In fact, it’s
befuddling to this 2D-viewer that the movie is being released in
3-D; given how dark the majority of what I saw was, I can’t even
imagine what it would be like through the dim lenses of those
damn glasses!
Speaking of the 3D, it only serves as
further proof that Alice in Wonderland is a commercial
cash-grab of the most uninspired kind. And if it wasn’t apparent
enough already, that sad fact will cross every thinking viewer’s
mind when the movie reaches its obligatorily action-filled
climax. As Alice gears up to battle the Jabberwocky, the
experience feels identical to the recent Chronicles of
Narnia: Prince Caspian in that it features a young
protagonist traveling to a ravaged fantasyland to restore peace
and happiness in downright loud fashion. In fact,
expensive and odd as it is, Alice in Wonderland feels
like a lot of other movies. There isn’t a reason to see it.
-Danny Baldwin,
Bucket Reviews
Review Published
on: 3.11.2010
Alice in Wonderland is rated PG and
runs 108 minutes.
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