A misery in Hollywoodland

Rating: 3/10 (1 September 2012)

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.
I really wanted to like this. I was genuinely excited. I try to temper my excitement lately, because most of the time it is met with disappointment. And here yet again...
The visuals are precisely what you expect of Tim Burton. He never fails to deliver a consistent vision, and while I will agree that may start to grate, especially if it is not your thing to start with, it feels perfect for this film. They should have been a match made in heaven- hence the excitement I could not quash.
The performances are good- although the mad hatter and his Scottish split personality was baffling. Alice is also somewhat flatter than she once was, but Mia has charm.
So the problem? The same problem that jumps up in far to many of Burtons films. The plot- or rather and I think here this is an important distinction, the story. Alice, the original, was never plotted in that oh so generic manner that most Hollywood films are. In the vein of other journey tales such as The Hobbit, it meandered, revelling in the wonder of its own world, the true narrative arc being the internal one of the main character. In the Hollywood world of inciting incidents, pivotal points, climax, and resolution this is not acceptable. We have, as we must have, a villain, a battle, a swash buckling heroine- god forbid Alice runs and squeals like a normal girl- all the subtlety, ambiguity and irreverent charming nonsense of the original is pushed aside for starkly drawn good versus evil morality, cheap sexual overtones and high stakes 'tension'. I use quotes because the so called tension they attempted to create with the ugly bander-whatever, the dark desires of the Red Queen and the final apocalyptic battle felt about as exciting as Beachgrove Gardens.
Burton is not a writer. And I personally feel that to be a great director you have to be a writer. Even if you cannot write dialogue, you must have an instinctive eye for story. He does not. He should have stuck with animation or cinematography. There he excels. I am now at the stage where I will pointedly avoid his films. However if this comes on tele I will say watch it for the lovely visuals, it's free.