Given the amount of press coverage about who’s going to be in it, who’s going to screen it or whether any of us regular plebs will ever get to acknowledge its existence, you’d be forgiven for thinking that this, the 427th (or thereabouts) version of Lewis Carroll’s classic book (which is not, I repeat NOT, for children) was some kind of celluloid miracle and that merely sitting down in front of it would cure you of every affliction known to man and make flowers made of 20-pound notes spring from the ground wherever you walked. My point is that, as a born and bred cynic, I always approach a film surrounded by this kind of hype with extreme scepticism, since I know from experience that studios only ever feverishly promote a movie in this fashion when they’re not sure whether it’s good or not.
Tim Burton’s Wonderland is a beautiful yet terribly twisted place, where the local populace of magical creatures still live in fear of the dreaded Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter) and her penchant for decapitation. On the other side of the land, living in her secluded and tiny kingdom, is the White Queen (Anne Hathaway), a paragon of goodness and mercy who is the rightful Queen of Wonderland. It is into this regional conflict that Alice (Mia Wasikowska), now nearly 20 years old, finds herself entangled, assisted and hindered in equal measure by Wonderland’s various denizens.
Visually, it’s utterly astonishing. Say what you like about Burton, the man is nothing short of a visual poet. Every part of Wonderland, from the green and lush forests, to the bleak and corrupted country around the Red Queen’s castle, is infused with its own brilliant personality. Being the first effects heavy 3D film of the year, comparisons in this department will inevitably be drawn to Avatar, and whilst Alice doesn’t equal James Cameron’s magnum opus on face value, Burton makes a much better fist of making his world, and the characters who dwell there, more likeable and immersive than Pandora and its identikit clan of blue cats.
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As has become the norm in Tim Burton films, all eyes will be on Johnny Depp as the iconic Mad Hatter, and to his credit, Depp sinks his teeth into the role with gusto, with multiple personalities and a genuine air of anarchy accompanying his every move. Depp’s problem however is that over the years he’s become so good at the “kooky oddball hero” that, when watching him play the Hatter you never feels like he’s stretching his acting muscles beyond a light workout and he ends up slightly less engaging for it.
Stronger performances can be found not too far away though, as Helena Bonham-Carter is sensational as the Red Queen. It would have been so easy to turn this character into a two-dimensional aristocratic villain-de-jour, but Bonham-Carter finds an excellent balance of comic humour tinged with a tragic loneliness that grabs the viewer’s attention and never lets go. Her relationship with Crispin Glover’s Knave of Hearts is also marvellously played out, with the balance of power never shifting one half of the duo into ridicule. Anne Hathaway copes well with arguably the hardest task of making the do-gooder fairy-godmother character interesting, giving the White Queen a pleasingly unstable dark-streak, bringing extra layers to an otherwise uncomplicated character.
So you’ve got an immersive world and engaging characters, now all you need is a story hanging the whole thing together and, amazingly considering Burton’s track record, this is where Alice in Wonderland falls down. For a source that revels in the abstract, this version of Alice is incredibly linear and safe when it comes down to the storyline. The script is not a bad one, but the situation Alice finds herself with (prophecy>ancient weapon>final confrontation) is disappointingly stale. Insanity and anarchy here feel forced and used as a chore, and the characters, whilst interesting and well performed, all eventually find their slot in the typical set-up for a film of this nature. I can understand Disney wanting to expand the film’s appeal to as young a generation, but they seem to have forgotten that the majority of people were raised reading the book and will be expecting something a little more abstract and a little less, well, patronising is the word I think I’m looking for.
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We’re still waiting then for a 3D movie that’s really going to make us sit up and take notice. Alice looks fantastic, but it falls into a similar trap to Avatar, albeit a smaller one, in that the story’s substance isn’t quite enough to give us complete escapism. That said, it’s nigh on perfect for children and young teenagers, for whom this will be a stunning CGI trip through classic fantasy and adventure.
Final Verdict: A decent enough fantasy thrill ride that will stun with mind boggling visuals and attentive detail to classic characters, but needed to be braver and more ambitious with its story choices to make it truly great.
Reviewer: Alex Hall
