Alice In Wonderland 3-D ( 2010 )

Starring:  Johnny Depp, Mia Wasikowska, Helen Bonham Carter, Anne Hathaway, Crispin Glover, & Matt Lucas

Directed By Tim Burton

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1014759/


For all its visual panache, its clamorous storytelling, and its toy chest full of bizarre textures, Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland” is a strangely passive film, dutifully ladling out its bits of filmic wizardry and expanding Lewis Carroll’s fantastical mythos in a promising new direction without any palpable sense of glee or verve.

It’s pure Burton, from the cluttered frames and grotesque characters and fiendish music to such thematic elements as an absent daddy and a golden-tressed heroine; clearly there’s a harmony of director and source material.  But there’s also a sense that Burton has come to the film reluctantly and kept himself occupied with razzle-dazzle with none of the passion he brought to “Edward Scissorhands” or “Ed Wood” or “Big Fish” or even “Sweeney Todd,” all of which seemed to engage him more deeply. 

“Alice” is, effectively, an updating of Carroll’s classic tale of mind-expanding journey into an alternative reality governed by strange laws of logic, grammar, play and peril.  Its heroine is not a little girl but a young London woman of 19 years (Mia Wasikowska) being courted by a dim-brained but wealthy young man whose marriage proposal causes her to flee -- all the way, in fact, to the rabbit hole down which she tumbled as a child during adventures she recollects now only in haunting dreams.

Once in Wonderland -- or, more properly, as she learns, Underland -- she finds that the bloody-minded Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter) has imposed a reign of terror, abetted by a court of sycophants, the vicious Knave of Hearts (Crispin Glover) and a pair of homicidal beasties:  the Bandersnatch and the Jabberwocky. 

An underground cadre of loyalists seek to restore the rule of the White Queen (Anne Hathaway) -- including the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp), the Tweedles, -dee and -dum (Matt Lucas) and the animated White Rabbit, Cheshire Cat and Blue Caterpillar (the voices of Michael Sheen, Stephen Fry and Alan Rickman, respectively).  But they all live in mortal fear of the Red Queen’s forces and wait for Alice to return and slay the Jabberwocky, an event that has been foretold in an oracular manuscript.  Alice, though, assures them that she is no killer.  Besides, it’s all a dream, isn’t it?

This story, inspired by Carroll and credited to screenwriter Linda Woolverton, recalls Steven Spielberg’s contemplation of a grown-up Peter Pan in “Hook,” which seemed at least partially the director’s effort to reconcile his own youthful enthusiasms with grown-up responsibilities.  Here, though, Burton seems absent, unless you count Depp’s goggle-eyed, psychologically skittish Hatter as his stand-in (it wouldn’t be the first time for those two, of course).  Indeed, Alice’s story as told here rather closely resembles the story of Wendy Darling in the original “Peter Pan,” another heroine who hoped to avoid maturation by flying into fantasy.  In that light, there’s little wonder that Burton, now in his 50s, with children of his own, can’t find a way to make the story ring emotionally.

He does, however, make it into something of a razzle-dazzle movie, at least intermittently.  Clearly Burton’s visual aplomb and ease with special effects mesh with Carroll’s imagination.  The gardens of Underland, with their horseflies and dragonflies and chatty flowers, the now-he’s-here-now-he’s-not Cheshire Cat, the arrayed armies of playing cards and chess pieces, the neurotic energy of the Hatter’s speech and behavior:  it’s all delightful and
exactly what we want from Burton.  Among the performers, the director’s stalwarts Depp and Bonham Carter dig into their roles with such infectious relish that not even the hammy Glover can equal them.

(A word on the film’s use of 3-D seems apropos here:  There are moments of imaginative use of the technology scattered throughout “Alice,” but you never once have the sensation of complete immersion that “Avatar” provided almost constantly.  It feels like it will be years -- decades, even -- before anyone else catches up to what James Cameron and company achieved.)

Absent a sense that Burton is connected at a personal level to the material, much of what’s good about this “Alice” feels like window dressing or ambient clatter.  “Alice in Wonderland” is one of the most filmed and staged stories of all time, and you could feel genuine excitement in imagining Tim Burton bringing new life to the material.  Strangely, and unfortunately, among those who seem not to have shared that sense of anticipation was Tim Burton himself.  He’s present in this film, sure, but he never feels truly invested.

Overall Rating:  ( * * * 1/2 )

Mr. What?