Tim Burton's latest Vanity Project: over-bloated Alice

Rating: 4/10 (6 February 2011)

2010's Alice In Wonderland came out with the usual amount of fanfare and commercial tie-ins for a Tim Burton movie. As of this writing, early February 2011, it is being run on cable movie networks, which means there will be plenty of people who will be glad they waited to watch it there than plunk down $10+ hard earned dollars for it when it ran at cinemas.
This, probably more than any other TB offering to date, amplifies and personifies what his movies are like: a sandwich filed a foot high with condiments and finery and other useless glop. It may be pleasant and even beautiful to look at but overstuffed, over-bloated, and difficult to swallow.
Some of it has to do with the source material. In the early days of movies, when executives wanted to make a movie of the Lewis Carroll tale, producers fought amongst themselves. They asserted that the convoluted and often nonsensical novel was practically unfilmable. Nevertheless, several versions of it came into being, the most popular of which was the sanitized and Disneyfied cartoon.
Of course, "making sense" never seems to be a priority for Tim Burton. The movie does have some strengths: the casting is good, and Burton's squeeze Helena Bonham-Carter makes an appropriately gaudily grotesque Red Queen. Anne Hathaway does a lovely, ethereal turn as the White Queen, the frenetic Crispin Glover oozes creepily from the screen as a Black Knave, and, as other reviewers have pointed out Alan Rickman nearly steals the show voicing the character of the Blue Caterpillar.
And then there is TB go-to guy Johnny Depp. Give credit to the costume department and makeup for managing to make Depp look like a CGI character, with his amber eyes beneath bushy, stick-like orange brows. The Hatter is Mad, no doubt about that, as Johnny Depp does well to hint at the insanity lurking just below the surface.
The problem? These characters are given little to do other than flit about through beautiful sets and glorious computer animation. On IMDb's front page for Alice in Wonderland, the second FAQ listed is "What is the movie about?" It is about Hollywood executives and financiers continuing to bankroll this overrated self-styled demigod and his pals so that they continue to pollute the cinematic landscape with ridiculous, overblown pap.