Alice in Wonderland
There once was a time when Tim Burton held the keys to some truly fantastical universes. Whether it was the candy-coloured suburbia with the gothic castle at the end of the street in Edward Scissorhands or the demented, decaying netherworld in Beetlejuice, Burton knew how to intriguingly open the gates to a truly terrific alternate reality. But those days are long gone, having vapidly vanished in a puff of smoke much like the ones emanating from the pipe of the blue caterpiller who occupies a corner of the CGI space that is Burton's Wonderland.
Operating as more of an unofficial sequel than a strict adaptation of Lewis Carroll's stories, Burton's take on Alice in Wonderland picks up thirteen years after the events of Alice's original adventures in Wonderland. The title heroine (played by Mia Wasikowska) is now twenty years old and about to unwittingly stumble into an awkward and unwanted marriage proposal. When she takes a moment to gather her thoughts, she ends up chasing after that pesky, punctually possessed white rabbit and then accidentally stumbling down a familiar hole.
She finds herself back in Wonderland, which is now a more decrepit and dishevelled place than before. Alice's initial moments in this Burton-ized version of the fantasy world are mostly cribbed from Carroll's story, but the idea is that the repetitive nature of Alice's actions are lost on her. Those earlier adventures chronicled by Carroll have now been lost to memory, previously written off as nothing more than a lively dream. So, within the first few moments of activating the movie's fantasy engine, Burton and screenwriter Linda Woolverton have already managed to retread familiar territory under the guise of something new.
Judging by where the story goes from here, perhaps they should have stuck to Carroll's text. Upon establishing that Wonderland has fallen into a state of extreme disrepair due to the dictatorial rule of the digitally disproportioned Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter), the story then proceeds to wander aimlessly in increasingly uninspired circles. Alice quickly meets some old friends, such as the Chesire Cat (all creepy grin and ambiguous attitude), the March Hare (a nutcase with a penchant for hurling objects), and the Mad Hatter (one of a handful of human beings living in Wonderland).
The Hatter is played by Johnny Depp, who looks as though he's nursing a hangover in the midst of impersonating a demonic version of Carrot Top. Oh, and since this is a wacky, kid-friendly flick directed by Burton, Depp spends most of his screen time sporting a lisp. He employed a similar shtick in Burton's misguided adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It was irritating then and his tired attempt to channel fantastical silliness is now doubly annoying. Much like his take on master chocolatier Willy Wonka, Depp's Hatter is less of an actual character than an excuse to partake in a meaningless game of eccentric dress-up. I'm all for some silly nonsense in a Wonderland movie, but does watching that nonsense have to be such a chore?
Depp's crazed histrionics may be only one problem in the grand scheme of Burton's blockbuster vision, but they represent the inanity of the entire movie. Imagination is replaced by flashy stupidity and what is intended to be engagingly eclectic is rather frustratingly flat. The magic that used to populate a Burton creation or realization is completely absent from the pile of pixels that comprise this dirtier, grungier version of Wonderland. The movie does offer a few visual treats and spotting the various uses of the heart motif in the Red Queen's castle proves to be mildly entertaining, but these small pleasures are barely noticeable in the sea of soulless narrative anarchy. And therein lies the biggest problem with Alice's latest adventure in Wonderland.
The script could not be less interesting if it were made up completely on the spot. It's little more than a series of captures and rescues, each facilitated by an extreme amount of luck. Every time a character faces some form of nasty conflict (often accompanied by the Red Queen's order to chop off someone's head), the solution to the conflict materializes out of nowhere and predictably on cue. This is one of the laziest forms of writing and it leaves the movie in a state of dramatic weightlessness. Nothing matters, because the plot is governed entirely by chance.
Why care for any of the characters or even root for them to escape a terrible situation when the necessary solution is guaranteed to fall directly in their lap every time? Since none of the actors deliver particularly impressive performances, they achieve very little with the threadbare script. Once upon a time, long ago, Burton would have known how to prop this circus up with a ton of heart and a tidal wave of achingly tender imagination. But now he's far too distracted by the oversized mushrooms and the talking animals to notice that his movie is a rickety roller coaster ride that went off the rails somewhere back in the first act.
Alice has returned to the fantasy world she visited so many years before, but the place has changed in unsettling ways. It is now devoid of the wide-eyed wonder that once made this strange land so special. In place of the delicious dreamscape that used to exist is a sickly parade of pointless idiocy. In many ways, Alice's return to Wonderland is mirrored by Burton's own attempt to rekindle an old magic. Having been invited to revisit the filmmaker's once fertile imagination, we find nothing more than cobwebs and clamorous action sequences. There used to be a wonderful world nestled in the mind of Tim Burton, but that place has grown cold and emotionless, now a fading shadow of its former self.
