Review by Scott Weitz

March 4, 2010

( 3 stars)

Darkness reigns in the fanciful realm of Wonderland — or Underland, if you prefer — as the Red Queen rules from high atop her ego (and giant head).  So too does Tim Burton's dark sensibility rule this grand if occasionally grim vision of ALICE IN WONDERLAND.  Technically spectacular in IMAX 3D if dramatically dry overall, Mia Wasikowska's Alice enlivens the tale as a vulnerable, humorous heroine who shines through this colorful yet shadowy journey. Otherwise Burton's film delivers more caricature than character, more splendor than satisfaction, and less heart than it deserves.

Opening in the real world of London, a little girl awakens from her recurring nightmare of sameness: falling down a hole after a white rabbit in a waistcoat.  When the blond lass with the dark circles around her eyes is comforted by her caring father, Tim Burton's hand is plainly, familiarly, if not repetitively evident.  In a world as lushly created and populated as Lewis Carroll's tales, must the heroine be yet another pale-skinned, unhappy waif in the director's patented mold?  Were it not for Mia Wasikowska's own inherent charms, sparkling eyes wiser than her years and fragile smile, Alice would blend into the pantheon of typical Burtonesque portraits of wan sadness — some of which were genuinely delightful, others just carbon copies.  Despite its floral majesty, zoological marvels and dizzying fancy, ALICE IN WONDERLAND resides in the middle of Burton's spectrum of achievement.

Of course this will not prevent the film from uncorking a large Drink Me bottle of box office success, but its very possible many expecting a stunning new adventure may discover an all too familiar walk through 3D-enhanced storytelling grounds.  Johnny Depp's name on the marquis alone will generate a huge opening weekend and rightly so, but the actor (a perennial favorite of FilmEdge) has invented and inspired far more enjoyable, original characters in his career. His Mad Hatter is a troubled and distracted soul, less delightfully manic than expected in a truly wigged out performance.  Shifting quickly between voices of courtly manners and rough Scots growling as the mood and scenes strike him, Depp's Hatter remains an elusive dramatic target through the film, tough to pin down and disappointingly distant.  Likewise, he embodies the film's technical mastery which muffles the heart beating beneath that never fully blossoms.

Despite the numerous potions and portions of talents applied, ALICE IN WONDERLAND suffers most from a distinct lack of fun to be had with a famously, notably and slyly outrageous concept devised by Carroll in the late-1800s.  Here Alice spends so much time proving herself, she's allowed little enjoyment in the plot and the Mad Hatter is too distracted by himself to provide raucous levity in such dark surroundings — a conjuring act Depp mastered three times in the PIRATES franchise alone.  So with a roster of excessive, extreme characters inhabiting Underland, one would think they could be successfully exploited to reach loftier comedic or fantasy heights.  Not so, strangely enough.

Expectations ran high in this regard for Matt Lucas, cast in double duty as Tweedledum and Tweedledee based on his solid comedy cred from the UK series Little Britain yet vastly underutilized here.  Lucas, swathed with ingenious digital prosthetics to become twin lumps of irrationality, spends the entire film reacting, mugging and kicking himself in the hindquarters — everything everyone would expect from the Tweedles and not one iota beyond that, through no fault of the actor though.  The same undercutting results arise from the performances of Crispin Glover as dastardly and dull Stayne the Knave of Hearts, and Anne Hathaway as the oddly airy White Queen who oscillates between a parody of Disney princesses or simply a monochromatic monarch in search of dramatic color.  You can see the actors struggling to build some complexity in their roles, but finally Linda Woolverton's plot-driven script hits all the right Wonderland notes but lacks the personal touch to pluck heartstrings.

Most baffling and annoying is the complete swing and a miss by Helena Bonham Carter as the melon-headed Red Queen, a character which should have utterly run amok with antagonistic chaos in Burton's Underland.  Her oversized skull and siren-like screams cause recoil rather than invitation to revel in the Queen's evil reign.  Again, Burton's dark take on the material saps the fun out of what should be the Red Queen's bombastic, superscaled delight in her bad behavior.  Lacking such a capacity, what's left is the boorish, incessant hammering of orders to behead every second creature on the screen that even the Queen fails to enjoy — and if she can't get into it, how can the audience?

The actors providing voices for their CG-animated counterparts fare much better, oddly enough, though again the script fails to make a distinctive mark on any of these characters.  Michael Sheen invests nervous energy and angst in the time-sensitive White Rabbit, Christopher Lee delivers monstrous menace as the Jabberwocky, and Stephen Fry makes the enigmatic Cheshire Cat an aural as well as visual treat with his deep, wafting intonations.  Cheers to Alan Rickman as well for his velvet voiced, hookah-puffing Absolem the Caterpillar in a supporting but key role.

Kudos rightly go to cinematographer Darius Wolski for achieving ALICE's wondrous look, production designer Robert Stromberg translating fantasy to virtual reality, and costumer Colleen Atwood's distinctive dressing up and down of our size-swapping heroine and her cohorts.  Chris Lebenzon's editing makes the dizzying tour of Underland geography in 3D both seamless and sensible, which is no small feat.  Danny Elfman's score supports Burton's wild ride without impeding its progress, though it may not stay long in your memory given the visual pyrotechnics firing off throughout.

In the end, Tim Burton conjures his idea of ALICE IN WONDERLAND as he does best but with now-predictable regularity.  Falling down his rabbit hole should have dropped us into a more surprising world, a dreamlike layer floating above Carroll's venerable, classic source materials Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1871).  Yet despite the 21st century cyber-advances in visual effects to bring this bizarre, brilliant realm to photorealistic life, little may catch audiences off guard aside from the film's occasionally disturbing imagery — no less than three creatures lose an impaled eye, and miniaturized Alice must hop across a moat filled with severed human heads.  ALICE IN WONDERLAND earns its PG rating for fantasy action/violence involving scary images and situations, so parents of quite young children (perhaps younger than seven) should do some research before heading to theaters.  Burton has done this all before, and better in many cases: summoning BEETLEJUICE for wacky inventiveness, producing THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS for sheer heart.  With ALICE, Burton merely puts the wan in Wonderland.

Mia Wasikowska's subtle, delicately powerful performance as Alice rises above the dark trappings of the director's gloomy palette, and her warmth adds a crucial glowing ember of emotional resonance at the heart of this technical fantasy.  The journey is more satisfying through her eyes and worth taking because of it.