A nice thing to watch but NOT to remember.

Rating: 6/10 (2 June 2010)

Yes, Tim Burton is a director one should marvel about. He's directed such masterpieces like "Edward Scissorhands", "The Nightmare Before Christmas" and the somewhat recent "Sweeney Todd", but like many other immortal directors he has a flaw. He's a visual genius who creates entire worlds out of scratch and quirky, involving characters that haunt our minds for many days to come...but he usually focuses too much on the visual aspect of his films and the result is that many of them lack the necessary luster in their story lines or character development, and its his characters precisely the ones who try to reach over audiences but who ultimately fail to do so in most cases. His latest box-office smash "Alice in Wonderland" is an example of one such film, where every scene is a breath-taking picture that fails to remain in our hearts and minds in the end.
We shouldn't be too hard on him, though. I mean this IS Lewis Carroll adapted to the screen, and the film is based on both "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass" two heavily surrealist books for children which never focus on plot but rather on frequently non-sensical situations. The film has an additional twist, also: 19-year old Alice (Mia Wasikowska) returns to Wonderland without a previous memory of ever being there before, where she discovers her ultimate destiny is to defeat a monstrous dragon commanded by the villainous Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter, who plays her role to comic perfection). To do so she'll need the help of the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp), the White Queen (Anne Hathaway), the twins Tweedledee and Tweedledum (both played by Matt Lucas), the Cheshire cat (voiced by Stephen Fry), the Blue Caterpillar (voiced by Alan Rickman) and many others. The film is rank with quirky, Burton-esquire characters which are paraded before us one after the other and are seldom given a chance to actually make an impression.
These characters do wonders with the few time that's given to them, though. Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter are especially hilarious in their lead roles, and most of the animated characters actually manage to make us laugh (the March Hare, voiced by Paul Whitehouse, is especially funny albeit the fact he's on screen for less than ten minutes). The film's point, much like the book, is to take children through an imaginary fantasy where nothing makes sense; but like many recent children' books adapted to the screen, an actual storyline has been introduced which tries to make sense and be profound but which fails entirely.
A point which has critics and audiences in high debate is the CGI aspect of the film. Over 80% of the film is animated, and all of the flesh-and-blood actors have had their features exaggerated and altered with computer imaging; Burton's famous settings and Gothic magical landscapes are all animated now, giving them additional beauty and quirkiness but taking away every sense of wonder they had before. I mean, remember Edward Scissorhands' dark castle or Halloweentown? Now imagine them being CGI'd, paired with sweeping, fleeting camera takes. A pity, isn't it? The magical realism is lost, the artistic meaning behind Burton's film is diminished and we're left with an adventure comedy kids are bound to adore but adults are bound to quickly dismiss.
Costume design and production design are perfect, as usual. Everything is meticulously detailed and it's a breath of fresh air to see actual art direction and production amongst all the CGI. The costumes the humans wear are a marvel of the imagination (but then again, it's Colleen Atwood, Burton's long-time costume designer, so what can you expect?). Danny Elfman's score is sadly forgettable, and I find this hard to digest since he's the composer of some of Hollywood's greatest scores ever. The plot is...well, disappointing even while factoring in the fact that it should be a plot-less movie. Why, Luis Buñuel's "Un Chien Andalou" had a more intriguing plot and you ALL know how sarcastic I'm being by saying that. Burton's direction is interesting enough, but this isn't bound to be a film he'll be remembered for.
Now, that doesn't mean it's not entertaining. It's VERY entertaining, as a matter of fact. I felt engrossed by the fleeting characters and the wonderful production design throughout the entire film, and once it was finished I had a sense that my time had not been wasted (much more than I can say for recent Hollywood flicks). It's a film full of blunders, though, and it's so much less than Burton is accustomed to give us that, even through its excellent points I fail to be much impressed. Oh, and poor Lewis Carroll; if he only knew how screenwriter Linda Woolverton has massacred his stories! See it, just for the hell of it. I liked it...but not too much. Rating: 2 stars and a half out of 4!