Mad as a Hatter

Rating: Null/10 (6 March 2010)

"There is a place. Like no place on Earth. A land full of wonder, mystery, and danger! Some say to survive it: You need to be as mad as a hatter." The Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp)
More than appreciating Tim Burton's visually stunning sequel to Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, I couldn't stop thinking how perfectly Johnny Depp plays the Mad Hatter: The infamous character is clearly disturbed but a good heart dedicated to stopping the bad heart, big-headed Red Queen, played with relish by Helena Bonham Carter. Depp is one actor who could do six impossible things before breakfast.
As arguably the most versatile actor in film, Depp almost always is superior (except as Dillinger, where he underplayed the flamboyant gangster), so my thoughts run to how an actor is the embodiment of a film, in this case the eccentric Hatter as the center of imagination and iconoclasm, just what Carroll ordered for his anti-establishment cartoon lampooning Victorian society and ushering in the age of individualism.
The tea party is still there with the March Hare (Paul Whitehouse) and Dormouse (Babs Windsor), but it's less whimsical and more morbid than in Carroll. Alice in Wonderland loses the original's innocence as the film moves to the unoriginal conclusion with its dragon Jabberwocky (Christopher Lee) no different from scores of other dragons in other fantasies. Even Alice's (Mia Wasikowski) heroics are derivative. As always Alan Rickman's voice has the ability to mesmerize, this time as the slow but effective blue caterpillar Absolem.
Burton has put all his weird makeup and love of bizarre characters into this film, which more than any of his other fantasies such as Edward Scissorhands and Corpse Bride echoes the epic struggles of good and evil in most kiddie, young adult, and cheesy romances over the ages.