Reviewed by Lamar Kukuk
3/28/10
Some projects seem so obvious
it's a wonder they took this long to happen: Tim Burton directing
a rogue's gallery of his regular players (led by Sweeney
Todd stars Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter) in a reimagining of
Alice
in Wonderland. Maybe they were just waiting for 3D, which further
sweetens the commercial pot. Given all this, it's no small matter
that Burton's Alice, as written by Beauty & The Beast
and The Lion King's Linda Woolverton, is very good. Taking
the characters and locations of Louis Carroll's titular novel and its sequel
"Through the Looking Glass", it constructs a fan fictiony action adventure
storyline set in a kind of post-apocalyptic Wonderland. While the
veteran stars playing all manner of CGI-enhanced creatures are great, Alice's
success really rests on the shoulders of Mia Wasikowska, who is splendid
in her first ever chance to front a blockbuster. Carroll purists
might blanch, but fans of fantasy action should have a ball.
6-year-old Alice Kingsleigh
(Mairi Ella Challen) is troubled by recurring nightmares about a journey
to a strange alternate world. Her father (Marton Csokas) reassures
her and encourages his daughter to embrace her individuality in a world
that has little respect for women. Years later, after his death,
the Kingsleigh family is gripped by money troubles and it's arranged for
a grown-up Alice (Mia Wasikowska) to become the wife of odious Hamish Ascot
(Leo Bill). But she can't bring herself to accept is very public
proposal and runs away after a rabbit with a watch she's seen running around
the Ascot's garden. Alice falls down a hole and ends up in a strange
room whose only exit is a tiny door. Using a potion to shrink and
pass through, she enters an even stranger world, where that White Rabbit
(voice of Michael Sheen) insists he'd led her there to determine if she
is “The Alice” prophecized to save the Kingdom from the cruel despot
The Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter). First thing's first:
she meets twins Tweedledee and Tweedledum (Matt Lucas), talking (and smoking)
caterpillar Absolem (voice of Alan Rickman), the magical Cheshire Cat (voice
of Stephen Fry) and the crazed Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp). Most of
them are captured by the Queen's servant Stayne (Crispin Glover) and Alice
must infiltrate the Queen's court to save her new friends. The Queen
has good reason to seek Alice's head. Those weren't just dreams:
the young Alice really did visit Wonderland and now only she can defeat
the monstrous Jabberwocky (voice of Christopher Lee) that is the source
of the Queen's power. Can the Hatter and the deposed White Queen
(Anne Hathaway) help Alice achieve her heroic destiny?
It would have been better
(albeit less marketable) if Disney had chosen a name other than Alice
in Wonderland, since while the movie does in fact find Alice in Wonderland,
it's telling a Hollywood blockbuster story arranging the pieces of Carroll's
creations in an entirely different order. But for those of us approaching
the film strictly for what it is, Burton's Wonderland runs the “chosen
hero must save a fantasy kingdom” playbook to perfection. It does
so mostly by keeping things simple: Alice is a great character, a
girl who takes her eccentricity seriously at a time when women were expected
to keep quiet and look pretty, and I really wanted to see her find a way
to become the hero of her own story. To that end, Woolverton simply
makes her our eyes as she lays out, one at a time, the pieces on the Wonderland
chess board and then lets the battle begin. The opening scene between
young Alice and her father is pivotal (Csokas is excellent and looms large
over all that follows his few minutes of screen time): we can really
see what a great parent he was and throughout we watch how the lessons
he taught his daughter prepared her to face life's challenges, both human
and Jabberwocky.
For all this to work, we
need great performances and visuals and we get both. First, the actors.
Alice could easily be dull because she's not flamboyant at all, but Wasikowska
shows great reserves of steely heroism and provides a great relatable center
to all the craziness swirling around her. She's clearly an actress
to watch. But the headlines are all about Depp as the Mad Hatter,
and he does pretty much exactly what you'd expect, donning a crazy costume
and going for broke with a maniacal cackle and high-pitched voice that
slips back and forth into a Scottish brogue for no apparent reason other
than that it's funny. But he also keeps an empathetic core to the
Hatter, who apparently used to be a more pleasant brand of mad than he's
been since the Red Queen spread darkness throughout the kingdom.
Bonham Carter is also very good as the evil queen with the huge head:
we can see how she's been worn down by a lifetime of being hated by everyone.
And some of that comes from the skill with which Hathaway plays her sister
the White Queen. It's clear she needs to be the ruler of Wonderland
because, unlike her evil counterpart, she's sworn an oath to harm no living
thing. But Hathaway does a great job showing us the difference between
someone who acts nice and IS nice: there's something quietly insufferable
about her that seems oddly appropriate to be the monarch of this strange
kingdom. Best of all the voice actors are Fry, who injects all kinds
of personality into the devilish Cat, and Rickman, who nails a pivotal
scene where Alice makes her decision whether or not to embrace her destiny.
The look of the movie is
quite impressive, even if Burton doesn't get a much mileage out of 3D as
you might hope for (look to Coraline for a
few lessons on how to use the technique to create a tactile sense of a
weird fantasy world). The dark, post-magical Wonderland seems appropriately
dangerous and alien, and things like the Queens' respective armies of chess
pieces and playing cards (fighting it out on a giant chess board) are creative
extrapolations of Carroll's themes. The FX manipulation of people
is very impressive, from Bonham Carter's really big head to the building
of Tweedles Dee and Dum around Matt Lucas' real face. Not all of
the CGI creatures achieve the same level of realism (the Jabberwocky in
particular seems more PS3 than Pandoran), but the Wonderland world has
a certain unreality built in, so it's not a fatal flaw.
Alice in Wonderland doesn't
break new ground: for a film made in cutting-edge 3D, it's kinda
retro down to its rousing Danny Elfman score and the clever witticism with
which Alice ends her final battle. But it is, above all else, a product,
and it's a great one. Few viewers who sign up for “Tim Burton's Alice
in Wonderland” will be unhappy with what they get, and some, such as
myself, will find it to be pretty darn awesome. |
