Is there anyone on the planet that didn’t know this movie was coming out this weekend and featured Johnny Depp in an outfit and makeup from The Birdcage? God Bless Disney marketing. I’m sure it was a billion dollars well spent.
Is there anyone on the planet that didn’t know this movie was coming out this weekend and featured Johnny Depp in an outfit and makeup from The Birdcage? God Bless Disney marketing. I’m sure it was a billion dollars well spent.
So, in a weird homage to… Hook… Alice is 19 now and isn’t really fitting in so she goes back to Wonderland to find herself. At first she doesn’t remember but it comes back to her and then there is a prophecy where she has to slay the Jabberwocky and free the realm from the Red Queen.
So that’s the setup, and the problems with this movie unspool from there. If we know that’s going to happen, now we’re just killing time for an hour while we finally wait for the climax. Are we along for the ride? No. The car, while it has some creative detailing, is too boring and familiar.
What director Tim Burton has done is pretty much just made his own movie and cherry picked characters from Lewis Carroll’s two children’s books. The movie had none of Lewis Carroll’s charm or bright and silly nonsense. But that’s not really what was wrong with the movie. American McGee made a video game with Goth Alice killing Wonderland monsters and it was engaging in a sick and twisted way. But Burton straddles the line between family Alice and dark Alice and we don’t really go in either direction. That’s the problem. We don’t really go anywhere. One of my favorite quotes from the book:
Alice is talking to the Cheshire Cat:
“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.
“I don’t much care where–” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.
“–so long as I get SOMEWHERE,” Alice added as an explanation.
“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”
Burton’s Alice in Wonderland walked long enough, but sadly didn’t get anywhere.
Visually, this movie hurt both my eyes and my head. Too much CG, Helana Bonham Carter as the Red Queen with an enormous head was well… off putting. Visually sometimes Burton was influenced but the original illustrations by Sir John Tenniel, and sometimes not. I saw it in 3-D which was completely unnecessary. That was obviously an afterthought. It wasn’t cool like Coraline or even necessary like Avatar to distract you from the Pocahontas in Space storyline. Stop putting 3-D polish to make your mediocre movie better.
Tim Burton is best when he uses his mix of practical and CG effects and actually uses actors. Big Fish was a great mix. Alice in Wonderland looks like a computer image from start to finish.
Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass were nonsensical books for children, with some slight themes for adults about aristocracy but mostly they were for children. Like a Gulliver’s Travels for kids. While these themes were almost introduced early on they got buried in a computer rendering within the first act.
Tim Burton’s remakes are simply horrible. I really feel he was ruining them on purpose so no one would ask him to do anymore. After Planet of the Apes came Charlie and the Chocolate Factory I was sure it was some kind of in-joke. He was going to make them worse and worse until studios got the message. But the trend ended with this film. Alice in Wonderland is much better than those two, but that’s not saying much. At least here it looked like Burton was semi-interested.
No so much Johnny Depp. I have no idea what accent or character he was trying to play and I don’t think he did either. Let’s talk about his performance as the Mad Hatter for a moment. It’s rare that I’m bored by a Johnny Depp performance, especially one where he looks like Ronald McDonald. But that’s exactly what I was. Bored. Was he mad? Not mad enough? Mad because he was sad? And why is he breakdancing? I am only asking these questions because I was bored. Bored by a character called The Mad Hatter. Really?!
So will the kids like it? Probably. It definitely skews a little older with some of the violence. But I have to say, while it wasn’t a good movie, it was definitely nice to see Tim Burton at least try a little bit when doing a remake. I personally went in with very low expectations but I have to say they were met. It’s nowhere near Burton’s best, but it’s also nowhere near his worst, either. But it’s definitely on that side of the line.
While I was walking out I heard a dude go to his girlfriend “I wonder if all that stuff happened in the book.” (Sigh) More money for public schools now!
—Chris Mancini
