Alice In Wonderland

Synopsis. Alice (Mia Wasikowska) is at a garden party to announce her betrothal when she falls down a rabbit hole into Wonderland. What marvellous adventures she will have.

The top end of American film appears to moving towards a crisis of satiation. In the pursuit of evermore spectacular dishes, everything is beginning to taste the same. Steven Spielberg has long been the leading exponent of the more-is-more, bigger-is-better school of technology-driven theme park cinema. In 2006 the trend reached its apotheosis in Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, a film actually based on a theme park ride (even more disheartening it was the second sequel in the look-alike series) that became one of the highest grossing films of all time. Its lesser practitioners can be found in the popcorn fare of Michael Bay and Roland Emmerich. In this universe any material, irrespective of its banality or wit, can, with the infusion of staggering amounts of money, be given a state-of-the-art makeover and released upon insatiable cinema-goers as the latest and greatest thrill of their lives.

And so enter Tim Burton and his long-standing partner Johnny Depp (who is, of course, the face of the Pirates Of The Caribbean franchise) and their makeover of Lewis Carroll’s famous children’s novels (which had been previously filmed by Disney as an animation in 1951). One might have hoped that they would have learned from their 2005 re-tread of the much-loved Willy Wonka And The Chocolate factory that deluxe production values are in themselves soulless.  Unfortunately this appears to have been lost on the duo. Alice in Wonderland 2010 bears less resemblance to the original texts (it is a hybrid of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Carroll’s sequel Through the Looking-Glass) than it does to any number of Hollywood zero-to-hero, winner-takes-all action movies. Little more remains of Carroll’s distinctly English mid-Victorian sense of topsy-turviness, of his love of word-play and cock-a-snoot absurdity, than the names of the characters and few irreplaceable motifs from the original text and John Tenniel’s illustrations. In Burton's transposition Alice is a bold young woman on a predictable hero’s journey against all odds. In other words Alice has been shoehorned into the same old Joseph Campbell template that underpins Star Wars and innumerable identikit Hollywood variants since. Ironically, there’s not a trace of illogicality in Burton’s Wonderland and his film is not a triumph of imagination but a testament to its absence. Twenty years ago Burton and Depp created a film of delightful unconventionality, Edward Scissorhands. That they are still playing the same eccentric riff is bordering on the tragic.

Some might argue that Alice In Wonderland is a kid’s movie and that children are hardly going to be concerned by Burton’s studio-shackled decline. But is it?  Aside from the fact that Alice is now revised as a 19 year old instead if the original's pre-teen 12, anyone who takes their child to it is probably going to be aggrieved by the sheer lack of wonder in Wonderland. The film comes close at times, particularly in the portrayal of the White Queen’s snow-covered domain but this is offset by the familiar action movie style mix of noise and violence that is now regarded as de rigeur for kids' animated films. We get the usual crashing pursuits though the undergrowth, the fisticuffs with the scar-faced villain and, of course, the climactic battle and the cliff-hanging dragon-slaying. All to the accompaniment of Danny Elfman’s typically menacing Gothic score and a battering assortment of sound fx, turned up to an eardrum (for children) punishing volume.  

Which is not to say that there are not some wonderful things about Burton’s film  - the art direction  is marvellous and the 3D live action/CGI animation combination is skilfully realized (one of the best scenes involves real frogs in page-boy suits) not over-playing the illusory depth (although Crispin Glover’s Knave of Hearts seems intentionally to be given a more stilted treatment than the other characters). Depp, of course, is a dab hand at this kind of marionette performance and Mia Wasikowska makes for an engaging Alice as does Ann Hathaway as the White Queen. It is however Mrs Burton (aka Helena Bonham-Carter) who steals the show as the wicked, bulbous-headed Red Queen.

The main problem with Burton’s film is that it is so generic that despite its technical achievements the net result is just another variation on an over-familiar and over-bearing big budget production style. Perhaps the most negative effect of this is that it is unlikely that many children seeing it will be inspired to seek out Carroll’s original text. And surely if Burton had any genuine concern for Carroll’s work this is what he would have wanted.

FYI: There was a 2016 sequel, Alice Through the Looking Glass, that reunited much of the same cast but was directed by James Bobin, whose career has largely been in television with a specialty in The Muppets. It was universally decried as managing to hit an even lower point than Burton's film.

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