This isn't Alice, this is a fanfic

Rating: 4/10 (28 March 2010)

First things first, Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland is a sequel, not a remake. No, its not Through the Looking Glass, its an entirely new sequel with an 18-year old Alice finding her way back to Wonderland (well, Underland, but whatever). Sequel is perhaps not the best word, because really, this is a fanfic with a budget, and as such is plagued with narrative issues. Which might be OK, but its visuals are also somewhat disappointing considering the pedigree, and the 3D effect is eye-straining.
Alice has grown up and assumed her childhood adventures were a figment of her dreams. Then she is distracted by a rabbit with a stopwatch after being proposed to by rich d-bag and falls back down the rabbit hole. Turns out, they need Alice to slay the Red Queen's dragon, the Jabberwock, freeing the people of Underland from her reign of terror. With the assistance of a militant Mad Hatter, a wise smoking caterpillar and a loopy White Queen.
If only Alice could convince herself it wasn't just a dream all over again. Maybe some people have considerably more lucid dreams than I have, however the fact that Alice goes through a solid three-quarters of the movie before finally realizing shes not dreaming. The movie seems to try to treat it the same way, despite it being blatantly obvious Wonderland is a reality. Its enough to make any viewer despise Alice for the entire course of the film.
Not that she's particularly hard to despise, since she's portrayed very flatly. She's not particularly naive or stupid or ditzy, just very flat and boring. In a movie as full of out-there characters as this, it would seem that thats the only way to play it, but it makes it very hard to care for the lead.
As for the rest of the cast, they clearly try to be as out there as possible with scattershot success. The best of the bunch is clearly Helena Bonham Carter as the evil Red Queen, who eats up scenery like a buffet. Even if we hear "off with her head" perhaps once too many times, her performance still comes close to saving the movie. Crispin Glover carries a villainous presence as the Knave of Hearts, a captivating role at first though eventually he amounts to nothing. Anne Hathaway also has some entertaining moments as the Gothic White Queen. While her makeup may not be as strange as for the other characters, her performance certainly is.
The problem is too many characters crowd the film. The problem with a fanfic is that certain characters meant for only one or two segments end up with incredibly inflated roles. In the original Alice, the minor characters took over the movie, but had their segments and then got out of the way. The new film tries to keep the cast continually growing, giving these minor one-dimensional characters enough screen time to make us sick of them.
The biggest instance is clearly the Mad Hatter, a character never meant for a role this big. Sure, he was memorable in the old Alice, but it was a concentrated dose. Here, he's given full lease over the movie, and gets flat out annoying. Johnny Depp does not help, as he seems on his own version of auto-pilot, not doing anything with the character we wouldn't expect of Willy Wonka or Jack Sparrow. Its another eccentric role that unfortunately doesn't feel much different than his others, and one of his most underwhelming performances in general.
Can't get by without mentioning the 3D effects. After seeing Final Destination use them as a crutch and Avatar use them beautifully, my feelings were that the 3D can be used for good if the effort is put into it. With Alice, it was obviously a last-minute add-in, because the effect wears on the eyes very quickly. I eventually just started having fun tilting my head side to side and changing the colour tint. Suffice to say the film is probably better in 2D.
The movie has some Gothic themes for sure, which may frighten kids more than the ads imply. For one example, there is a river of human heads. Cue nightmare fuel. The movie wants to seem grown up with these things, clearly thrown in to appease fans of Nightmare Before Christmas, but the plot is unable to keep up. The movie ends in a gigantic battle, just a lazy excuse for the few who wanted to see the Tweedles do battle. Its a lazy ending, thats for sure.
Tim Burton may have seemed like the perfect choice on paper for Alice, but it just didn't work. Most of the blame lands on the lazy fanfic of a script, and the over-reliance of small characters. It has some nice visuals and the Red Queen is certainly entertaining, but all ye stoners would be better off to keep watching the cartoon.