Fun to look at, anyway

Rating: 6/10 (6 March 2010)

In this reimagining of the Lewis Carroll stories, Alice returns to Wonderland after a ten-year absence and finds herself pegged as the savior for the mystical land, now ruled with an iron fist and bulbous head by the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter). Tim Burton's film is, as expected, visually stunning and imaginative but suffers from a predictable plot and 3D effects that feel sort of unnecessary.
Alice (newcomer Mia Wasikowska) is now 19 years old and dreams nightly of her previous journey into Wonderland, but she has no memory of the actual visit. Her mother wants Alice to be married into a rich and powerful family, and at the beginning of the movie Alice and her mother appear at a posh to-do thrown by the parents of a snotty, dumb-looking suitor, who of course pops the question to her in front of a hundred simpering guests. But our Alice isn't ready for such a commitment to such a drip, so off she runs, comically falling down a hole in pursuit of the White Rabbit.
Once in Wonderland, Alice encounters several of the characters she met during her earlier visit: Tweedledum and Tweedledee, the Cheshire Cat, the Blue Caterpillar, the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp), the Dormouse, and the March Hare. It seems that the denizens of Wonderland have been awaiting Alice's return so that she can free them from the Red Queen's tyranny, something about a mystical calendar that prophesies Alice slaying the Jabberwocky.
As with most Burton films, this one is a real treat to watch. In fact, if you just turned the volume down and put your special glasses on, you'd be amazed at the jaw-dropping CGI. CGI gets a bad rap nowadays, as if it were always a short cut to actual acting. But here, I found the effects to be creative and wonderful to behold. Indeed, Bonham Carter and Depp have as much to do with their characters' personalities as the CGI does.
It might be that the movie doesn't lend itself very easily to 3D, but I think it's more likely that the script wasn't tailored quite enough to that technology. For example, the 3D Journey to the Center of the Earth, for all of its problems, was able to integrate 3D into the plot somewhat seamlessly, with boulders and birds alike flying toward the audience. Burton's Alice in Wonderland doesn't do that quite enough for the 3D to be really worthwhile. On the other hand, the pure animation of the movie is reminiscent of Coraline, and that's a very favorable comparison indeed. Wonderland here isn't meant to be some beautiful, pristine land; it's a land damaged by the touch of the bitter Red Queen, and you get a real sense of ominous peril.
On the plus side, the acting and voicing is really top notch. JOhnny Depp is always a lot of fun to watch, in my estimation, no matter how goofy his hair may be (and it's plenty odd here). Sure, he turns in the affected performance from time to time, like his Willy Wonka, but his Mad Hatter here is both vulnerable and heroic (something that perhaps Lewis Carroll hadn't envisioned). But Bonham Carter is absolutely stunning as the Red Queen. She manages to be both terrifying and hilarious at the same time. The Red Queen, full of vanity but desperate for acceptance, is at once the most charismatic character in the movie.
Another down side is that it seems to take forever and a day for Alice to even get to Wonderland. I think Burton spends a little too much time with the so-called outside world, at both the beginning and the end of the movie. What Alice's life is like outside Wonderland should be only of minimal importance to this story, I think. What matters to us is what happens to her in Wonderland, how she will persevere, who will she meet, and at which sizes will she be? It's helpful to know that Alice is about to be married to a selfish brat, but we don't need to spend 20 minutes on her outside-world situation.
A final debit is that the movie operates on two tracks: one is a fantastic voyage replete with beautiful and amazing creatures and things, and the other is a standard-issue save-the-downtrodden heroine plot thread. The latter could have been scripted by any number of minimum-wage screenwriters. It reminded me of all of those movies in which some plucky hero or heroine fights all odds (as well as a lack of strength and wits) and somehow defeats the evil menace. Alice is no Lara Croft; she's not even a Red Sonja. She's just a teenager who's not even sure if she's dreaming or not.
Alice in Wonderland does have its moments, but it tries to hard to mix a great children's story with a mythology and magic and kidnapping and revenge and other dark themes. And beware if you take children to see this. Even though it's a PG-rated movie, the film does contain a bit of violence, in particular a scene in which a baddie gets an eye plucked out.