A competent adaptation

Rating: 7/10 (6 March 2010)

I have to admit that I went to watched this movie with mixed feelings, since it's critical reception in my country has been mixed and lukewarm and I suppose the critics would have been more vociferous, had they not being restrained by the glamour and respect the name of Tim Bourton commands.
I personally found the movie good enough, given the fact that it visualized an allegorical fairy-tale, something like Animal Farm, therefore it's scope is by definition restricted, since no allegory however brilliant can cope with the richness and ambiguity of real life itself.
Having become conciliated with watching a fairy-tale, I enjoyed it, not so much about it's overall political or social sophistication but because it contained impressive graphic work and singular, if flat, characters.
First of all I learned about the dragon Juberwakee, whom I thought a product of Terry Gilliam's cinematic imagination. The dragon had the same form that it had in Gilliam's movie, only it was frightening while in the Gilliam movie it was pathetic.
The Chesire cat had an aptly mischievous look, similar though to that of Woopie Goldberg in a previous adaptation of the fable. I recognized the voice of Alan Rickman in Abessalom, familiar from Harry Potter's Professor Snape. Mat Lucas, of Poppetown fame was the voice of the mutually contradictory twins.
I liked Johny Depp as the Mad Hatter, although he must be an exception in cinematic history, since he became a huge star portraying quizzical characters and thus refuting Dr.Johnson's dictum that "nothing odd would last".In this movie he stays loyal to the quizzical tradition he has created.
Ann Hathaway is the good White Queen rather feeble compared with her sister the evil Red Queen, played by Helena Bonam Carter. Both are flat characters, although the mannerisms of evil are rather more memorable but I think is a generic problem since goodness like happiness does not create such a spectacular impression as their opposites.
The sidekick, paramour and protégé of the Red Queen, was evil as well as slimy and even a traitor to his own benefactress. I think his morals were the worse of all the personages of the movie and that was vividly portrayed in the acting.
The graphic work was competent and it even made the card-soldiers of the Red Queen look quite menacing.Also very able was the presentation of her obsequious and sycophantic courtiers.
A peculiar problem that I had was with the language and I think it applies to any viewer whose language is not English. The word-plays and innuendos in English were mostly lost in the translation-subtitles and I could not understand their content in English unless I saw them written in English, which was not the case.
The characters of the people which referred to the real world, were Victorian ladies and gentlemen, rather stuffy or even ridiculous, the suitor of Alice, for example.
What I found curious is that the moral that Alice extracted from her adventure in Wonderland, was not a lesson in goodness or meekness, in the lines of her patroness there, the White Queen, but a vindication of Victorian commercial imperialism.In the final scene of the movie, Alice back in the real world, takes her place as the heir of her father, who was an enterprising merchant on the grand scale, deciding to continue and further his venture of overseas trade, renewing the partnership with a partner of her late father. We see scenes of goods travelling in far away eastern lands and Alice furthers her father's venture, proposing trading relations even as far as China, an idea with perhaps modern connotations in mind. I admit that I had never considered the Alice novels as moral justifications of the "white man's burden", or as educational tools for those destined to inherit and further imperial responsibilities.
In general I found the movie not bad at all and less "dark" than some Lord of the Rings, Star Wars or late Harry Potter movies-if we stay within the domains of books for the young that were adapted to films.