Alice in chains

Rating: 5/10 (30 September 2011)

Maybe I'm getting all CGI'd out but all these phantasmagorical movies of recent years seem to me to be blending into one big amorphous morass. Watching this Tim Burton update of the classic "Alice In Wonderland" tale (why keep the same title for a different story?), I felt there was little I hadn't seen before in a Harry Potter, Lord Of The Rings or Narnia derivation, never mind the ghosts of Burton's own past including "Beetlejuice", "Edward Scissorhands", "Charlie And The Chocolate Factory" and "Sleepy Hollow".
So we get a late teenage Alice with issues, a much darker and good-and-evil polarised Wonderland (or Underland, if you will), and a much bigger part, not unnaturally, for big star Depp. Unfortunately this latter condescension to the box-office skewers the film too much away from Alice as the title and therefore central character. Burton also can't resist a bloody big battle as the conclusion as Alice confronts the dread Jabberwocky. Plus a typically bombastic soundtrack from Danny Elfman which hardly helps with the enchantment.
Yes, it is a grand spectacle and must have looked great in 3D for those with extra cash to spend but Burton makes the mistake of treating the audience like adults when we should be made to look more for our inner-child again. As for the performances, Mia makes for a fairly unconvincing Alice and seems too old for part. Depp plays his wide-eyed eccentric outsider the way he always does, only this time, for some reason he trots out his dreadful Scottish accent (a la Mike Myers) he last utilised in "Finding Neverland". Better is Mrs Burton herself, Helena Bonham-Carter as the wicked red queen (for some reason she's not called the Queen Of Hearts despite being surrounded by hundreds of them at her court) and her enormous head while there's lots of British support in real-life roles as well as in speaking roles for the talking animated characters. I also think the film could have inserted a bit more humour, especially in the second half, to leaven the heaviness.
Certainly it's easy on the eyes, with some good stunts and yes, special effects dropped in at regular intervals, but in the end it employed too many genre clichés for my liking and thus let down