|
 Like
many a wellborn Victorian teen, Alice has had her life planned out for
her; from what she’ll wear on any given day to the man she’ll be tied to
‘til death do her part. However, with her head in the clouds and her
mind firmly her own, the engineering of an advantageous marriage to a
bilious, entirely unappealing lord sends the young woman running for the
hills and plummeting down a rabbit hole. The new world she discovers at
the end of her drop is one that is quite impossible and fantastic, but
isn’t exactly as new to Alice as she first supposes. This Wonderland,
peopled with talking rabbits and caterpillars, feisty mice and floating
felines is on the verge of civil war. A dreadful empress in red with an
outsized cranium serves on the side of badness and her saintly
lily-white sister, the rightful queen, is on the side of all things good
and righteous. Alice is once again in a situation that seems out of her
control; whether to join the fight against the terrible Red Queen as she
is told her destiny has commanded or to abstain from any involvement
with any of Wonderland’s royal squabbles. Unfortunately for Alice, her
future depends on her decision as do the lives of the new, unusual
friends she’s made.
Adoring as I am of films like Pee Wee’s Big Adventure {1985},
Beetlejuice {1988}, Ed Wood {1994}, Sleepy Hollow {1995}
and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street {2007}, I have
always admitted that director Tim Burton has serious issues with story
structure. Take the unfortunate Planet of the Apes {2001} and
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory {2005} as examples of his
problems keeping a narrative on the rails. Burton’s singular aesthetics
trump story every time and in the case of the majority of his chosen
material it works out great and is what makes him one of the most
individual filmmakers ever seen. In what would seem the perfect world
for premiere oddball auteur to inhabit, Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland
provides a showcase for both some of the director’s greatest strengths
and weaknesses. In a story as baroque as Carroll’s children’s tale, a
mind as similarly Byzantine as Burton’s bringing it to the screen will
either result in a great chemistry of like minds or a sorry misfire.
With Alice in Wonderland, there is ample evidence of both. Beautiful
looking and as perfect a representation as anyone could hope to see in a
(mostly) live-action feature, Alice in Wonderland’s issues are
with its script, which is too messily tended and winds up a flat muddle.
Taking most of its cues from the 1951 Walt Disney animated adaptation
and giving it both a feminist twist and his own slightly dark edge,
Alice in Wonderland works in fits and starts. Making Alice a girl hero
on the verge of womanhood fighting literally to control her own destiny
was a plus with me and is a perverse thumb to the nose of the Victorian
mores of Alice’s time that made ladies little more than pretty
property. The message suffers a bit when played against the vapid White
Queen’s aggressive, saccharine goodness that doesn’t allow her to fight
her own battles and the assertive Red Queen’s innate evilness. Also, we
discover that Alice is some sort of entrepreneurial prodigy, but is
thrilled to accept far less than her due for ingenuity that will gain
others millions. The film also succeeds in doing something that had
been attempted several times yet never totally attained in a Burton
film; they finally made Johnny Depp irretrievably ugly -- not an
achievement I was looking forward to. Ironically, having looked very
different leading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Depp’s Mad Hatter
closely resembles a grotesque caricature of Gene Wilder from 1971’s
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. His freaked-out red frizz
reaches from either side of his head and out from his eyebrows
underneath an enormous, curiously fashionable top hat, pale Kabuki make
up, and to creep us all, uncomfortable-looking yellow sclera prising his
eyes wide open. (In his armour, long black wig and a heart-shaped eye
patch, the film’s implausible heartthrob is the Black Knave, played by
another cinematic oddball, Crispin Glover.) The Hatter takes a good
deal of screen time in a change from Carroll’s original tales; we’re
given a backstory which explains why he is an unlikely leader in the
rebellion against the Red Queen. Depp shows more restraint than one
might reckon playing a crazy person in a Tim Burton film, unfortunately
the focus on the Hatter only makes a wanly written Alice even paler.
Resembling young Robin Wright in The Princess Bride {1987}, Mia
Wasikowska is sweet and thoughtful as the unwitting legend of Underland,
which the previous Alice dubbed Wonderland years before. It’s a shame
that for all the post-feminist notes in the film, Alice isn’t written
with more spark. Helena Bonham-Carter doesn’t help either in that
regard, as she takes queen-sized bites out of the script as the vain,
lovesick ruler who really enjoys separating her subjects from their
skulls. The Red Queen’s bulbous, globelike head provides most of the
comedy in the film and the joke gets old immediately. Running a close
second in the scenery-chewing stakes is Anne Hathaway, who twirls,
trills, poses and flounces as the White Queen, playing the deposed
regent like Glinda the Good Witch on steroids.
Besides the beautiful visual effects like Alice’s tumble down the rabbit
hole and the hypnotic airborne twirls of the Cheshire Cat, as one would
expect from a Tim Burton movie, the production values are brilliant.
Small details like Alice’s Alexander McQueen-esque big and small dresses
and the Hatter’s Phillip Treacy-worthy creations are stunning. There
are glances back to Burton’s successes with the rabbit hole being placed
at the bottom of the Sleepy Hollow tree, Edward Scissorhands’ topiary
adorns Wonderland’s royal courts and swirling, gothic archways
resembling those in The Nightmare Before Christmas lead Alice into the
world she believes is a particularly vivid dream. The abundance of CGI
effects practically put the film in the animated category and at times
its green-screen environs almost limit the world in the claustrophobic
quality the human performances sometimes take. On the better side of
the CGI are the Red Queen’s guardsmen, a faceless, lumbering
metal-slatted deck of cards and the rendering of the Jabberwocky is
faithful enough to the classic illustration by artist John Tenniel while
retaining Burton’s style. Recalling the director’s bittersweet tenure
as an animator for Walt Disney Studios before striking out on his own, I
had to wonder if the resemblance of the Jubjub to a rabid version of
Up’s loopy Amazon bird was intentional.
There
are simply no heights with Alice in Wonderland; no jawdropping moments
or instances of cleverness or ingenuity that would place this film
amongst the top of Burton’s pantheon. It is far more enjoyable than
Burton’s last kiddie-lit adaptation, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,
which was such an irritating grind I thought my eyes and ears would
bleed, but it should have been much more. Alice in Wonderland is a
lovely display of Tim Burton’s amazing offbeat aesthetics which win me
over every time, but sadly doesn’t make for very much of a film.
~ The
Lady Miz Diva
March
5th, 2010
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