The Alchemist, April 13, 2010, Volume 3, Number 119
Vol. 3, No. 119
Alice in Wonderland – short, lonely review
The new Alice in Wonderland is actually a return to Wonderland, set a dozen years or so after the original. While kids will enjoy the tale, anyone looking for a return to the wonderland of their childhood will be disappointed. In fact, it’s not even Wonderland anymore; Alice is told she heard it wrong as a child: it’s actually Underland.
The sole character in the film to achieve both likeable and friendly qualities is everyone’s usual favorite, the Cheshire Cat. Visually the cat is excellent, but making him so friendly is contrary to his intended role and deprives the story it’s best source of chaos.
Instead the task of chaos falls to Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter. While Depp is a fine choice for the Hatter as the character was intended, here he is made not only a loving devotee of Alice, he is given the role of hero, a role that feels as forced as the story itself. The entire movie is spent looking for a hero, one Lewis Carroll easily provided with the White Knight – a character never brought into the film, which is surprising what with all the other outside references and usually-disregarded pieces of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. That is the sole point on which the Hatter excels. He loves spouting out maddening strings of what seem to be unintelligible words and phrases but are actually parts of the nonsensical poems and other prose Carroll had in the original story. Then Burton had to go and try to explain how the Hatter became mad in the first place and all the fun goes out of it.
The same goes for nearly every character – most of them play their part well, Mia Wasikowska as Alice and Helena Bonham Carter as The Red Queen included, but the roles given to them just aren’t that great. Then there is Anne Hathaway as The White Queen, the character everyone on the side of good is supposed to be supporting and also the creepiest character in the film. She inspires no desire to support her at all.
Outside the flashy 3D effects, the most fun parts of the film are the CG characters who Burton managed to get right. For instance Tweedledee and Tweedledum are spectacular, but neither can they be heroes or main characters. The same goes for the March Hare, the Caterpillar and the Dormouse.
The story itself is an epic fail. The beginning is a copy of the original, the middle is a series of continual forced coincidences, and the end is a jumbled mess in need of a real hero: the aforementioned White Knight. There are some fun trips to be had in between, creepy ones too. If you take children they will want to get away from you to creep closer to the screen, but you’ll want to be near them at the moment they realize Alice is crossing a moat by walking across hundreds of vividly detailed severed heads.
After everything is said and done, the new Alice in Wonderland is just eye candy. If you just have to see it, see it now while it’s still on the big screen to get the best 3D effect.
If this were how the original stories went, Lewis Carroll would have been forgotten long ago. He may prefer that to the way he must be rolling in his grave right now.
~ Robin Canfield
