Infuriating

Rating: 5/10 (27 November 2010)

This is a disappointing adaptation of two strange, mysterious, and under-appreciated books.
I accept film adaptations, and sometimes welcome them. For example, I thought that the film adaptation of "The Hunt for Red October" was much better than the book, with tighter action and no plot holes. I welcomed all the Harry Potter film adaptations. Sometimes an imaginary world demands to be put before our eyes.
I am also infuriated by poor film adaptations. They do the original material an injustice, they fail all the more because they don't rise even to the level of the original, much less go past it. This is why, for example, I think the Wizard of Oz is only so-so. It is a "beloved film", but it falls short of the original book, which most people have forgotten.
It's the same problem with every treatment of Alice In Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass that's been made so far, including Tim Burton's. Both "Oz" and "Alice" are fantasies from a different age, and so presenting them to a modern audience takes an extra bit of work. Unfortunately, both the makers of "Oz" and the makers of "Alice" were lazy. Instead of taking the work as it was, they had re-tell it as their own story.
Fair enough, but then if you do that, don't use the title of the original work. Don't pretend that you've captured the original if you haven't.
Tim Burton's "Alice" doesn't capture the original. It's completely anachronistic and unrealistic for the time in which the story is set, and the entire movie ignores all of the mystery and subtlety of the books, preferring instead to teach "lessons" that Dodgson might have preached but Carroll would have avoided. The whole charm of the books is that they *don't* teach lessons. They explore the mysteries of meaning, they ask questions without answers. They are not examples of "being true to oneself", they're explorations of going out into the boundaries of perception and madness. Unfortunately, while Tim Burton's art is capable of this, his works are trite and unadventurous.