'Twasn't brillig!

Rating: Null/10 (24 March 2010)

If ever there were a working example of the word "whimsical," it would be the works of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (a.k.a. Lewis Carroll), i.e.: "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass." The stories, stuffed with clever word play, non-sequiturs, train-of-thought chaos and general silliness, are not exactly funny, so much as just being playfully amusing. The reader – like Alice – takes a trip of wayward, unpredictable imagination. Tim Burton's film version (or re-imaging) of Carroll's tales likely will never be accused of being whimsical. Indeed, one would be hard pressed to find a trace of whimsy in any line of dialog or overwrought image. Burton's film, while certainly being visually stunning, is also dark, and at times just plain depressing.
Burton has said that he never felt emotionally connected to the "Wonderland" stories because they seemed like they were just about a young girl wondering around meeting unusual characters. Which is exactly what they were about. Their unpredictable nature and inexplicable logic is what made them what they were: engaging, if somewhat high-toned, nonsense. Burton and his screenwriter Linda Woolverton have tried to tame the material by boxing it into clichés and a tiresomely predictable plot. He expertly keeps the visuals more or less right – though he has made it all look gloomier and creepier – but the literary essence of the original material has been tossed aside to make room for little that might be considered funny and even less that might pass for fun.
The story begins with Alice, as a little girl, interrupting her father's business meeting to tell him she has had another in a series of recurring dreams, presumably about Wonderland, and she asks him if the dreams are a sign she is going mad. A few joking and reassuring words temporarily puts her mind at rest, but the film reveals itself; the dream world of the little girl is now to be treated as a nightmare world that may be caused by or will result in mental illness. The story jumps a head over a decade later where Alice's widowed mother hopes to marry her off in an arranged union with an upper class twit. Will Alice wed the twit? Duh! The end is obvious – as is the heavy-handed feminism jammed into the story.
Soon Alice (Mia Wasikowska) falls down another rabbit hole and lands in Wonderland – or is that Underland? But Wonderland is now a bleak and ramshackle place, with most everybody living in fear of the tyrannical Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter). Alice eventually discovers that she is the chosen one, expected to help the White Queen (Anne Hathaway) save Wonderland from the bombastic Red Queen by battling the ferocious Jabberwock. Instead of a bewildered outsider lost in a strange world, Alice is now a reluctant messiah. Few of the oddball characters from Carroll's books have been retained, apparently to make room for an expanded role for Burton's favorite muse, Johnny Depp as The Mad Hatter. Depp takes up far too much of the story time for a character who looks far more interesting then he really is. Worse, a hint of a possible romance between the Hatter and Alice rings false.
This ALICE IN WONDERLAND isn't for kids. Of course, the same could be said for the original books, what with their obscure literary allusions and now-dated popular references. Whether for commercial reasons or a sheer lack of imagination, the film is yet another childhood fantasy that has been re-written into an adult horror film. Like the disastrous THE WIZ and Steven Spielberg's overblown HOOK, a gentle and benignly scary fairy tale has been twisted around in order to supposedly explore adult themes. And as Disney did this once before, back in 1985, when they made RETURN TO OZ, a horrible and unwarranted sequel to THE WIZARD OF OZ: they've taken a colorful, playfully perplexing fantasy world and turned it into something unpleasant and uninviting. There's nothing particularly wrong with taking an old literary classic and looking at it through fresh eyes, if the look is truly fresh, but remains true to the original -- as, say, Burton did with SLEEPY HOLLOW.
Like the recent SHERLOCK HOLMES, this ALICE an exercise in dumbing down. Just as the former film takes Holmes and de-intellectualizes him, making him into a rough-and-tumble superhero, the later indulges in victim feminism, turning Alice from being a precocious, adventurous child into a sorrowful, reactive woman. Here Burton and screenwriter Woolverton become regressive feminists, changing a wide-eyed, curious little girl into a repressed, depressed and distressed woman who "takes control of her dream," dons armor and becomes a warrior and ends up being empowered.
And what does this empowerment lead to? She becomes a businesswoman. So much for intellectual whimsy.