Alice in Wonderland (2010)

Although many have been anticipating Tim Burton’s version of Alice in Wonderland, I’ll admit the task of reviewing it reminded me of my high school and college years. An English teacher assigns some dreary old “classic,” then the poor class spends a week or more studying and discussing it. This wasn’t always such a bad thing, however, as being forced to read A Tale of Two Cities in ninth grade put me on the path to being a Dickens fan.

My resistance to seeing Alice in Wonderland stems from my recent lack of enthusiasm for Tim Burton. When he began directing feature films in the mid-1980s, I was more than a little impressed. Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure and Beetlejuice were highly stylized, cartoonish exercises in silliness that still manage to entertain today. And while I’m in the minority, I believe Burton and Michael Keaton’s Batman movies are far better than what Christopher Nolan and Christian Bale have produced. And Edward Scissorhands–his first of what now number seven collaborations with Johnny Depp–is the closest Burton has come to creating a true masterpiece of cinema.

But Edward Scissorhands is now 20 years old, and since then, everything Tim Burton has directed has been disappointing in one way or another. With the exception of Martin Landau’s remarkable performance as Bela Lugosi, Ed Wood was a misguided lampooning of a misunderstood director. Mars Attacks! was an unfocused mess. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Planet of the Apes were unnecessary. Sleepy Hollow and Big Fish were forgettable. And after Burton and company’s last production, an anemic presentation of the brilliant musical, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (especially marred by the miscast Helena Bonham Carter, who cannot sing worth a damn), I was prepared to write him off as another director past his prime.

Knowing that Tim Burton has directed a new version of Alice in Wonderland, one doesn’t need a poster or trailer to know what to expect. Weird, gothic-looking sets. Swooping camera movements. Gallows humor. Serifs on the lettering and curlicues on almost everything. Johnny Depp looking crazed and chewing the scenery. Burton’s current squeeze featured in the cast (this is Carter’s sixth movie with him). And a score by Danny Elfman, who also deserves criticism considering that he hasn’t produced a memorable composition since 1995′s To Die For.

So I’m surprised and pleased to report that Alice in Wonderland isn’t disappointing, but actually rather good. While it’s not on the level of Edward Scissorhands, it is Burton’s best since then. One major benefit is the Disneyfication of the project, which not only helps to ensure necessary visual oomph in front of the camera, but also helped in the organization and structure of the story. Lewis Carroll’s wildly fanciful prose always seemed disjointed and incoherent (as are the ramblings of most drug addicts). Screenwriter Linda Woolverton (The Lion King) made some skillful restructuring to give Alice’s episodic adventure a clearer through-line, engage the wild array of creatures and characters in more than brief appearances, and establish a framing story that, though a bit too simple and simple-minded, invests the audience to a greater degree in the character of Alice, rallying a touch of 19th century female empowerment.

In this telling of the tale, Alice (newcomer Mia Wasikowska, whose assured performance is one of the film’s finest elements) is 19 years old and awkwardly thrust into a public marriage proposal she’s not ready to accept. Though Alice’s cluelessness at the reason for this elegant garden party seems hard to swallow, the assembled cast of British snobs are believably realized, led by Alice’s ice queen of a mother (Lindsay Duncan, similarly cold as Servilia on HBO’s Rome). Alice’s desperation to flee the scene–along with her pursuit of a curious White Rabbit (voiced by Michael Sheen)–leads her down the rabbit hole to the fantastically bleak Underland.

There, she encounters the heavy-smoking blue caterpillar, Absalom (mellifluously voiced by Alan Rickman); the floating and mostly invisible Cheshire Cat (Stephen Fry); the peculiar twins Tweedledee and Tweedledum (Matt Lucas); and, of course, the Mad Hatter (Depp). With help from a bloodhound named Bayard (Timothy Spall) and the frumious Bandersnatch itself, this lunatic assortment of characters help hide and protect Alice from the Red Queen (Carter, with an optically enlarged head and shrunken body, in a hilarious performance that nearly redeems her for Sweeney Todd) and her Knave of Hearts (Crispin Glover, an inspired choice for the role), then help Alice defend the White Queen (Anne Hathaway) against the fearsome Jabberwocky (Christopher Lee).

The film begs comparison at times to other contemporary special-effects spectaculars. An animal chase scene through a forest had me thinking Avatar In Wonderland. Other scenes, especially those playing with disparities of relative scale and the climactic fight scene, are reminiscent of Peter Jackson’s work on The Lord Of The Rings. All set to yet another generic-sounding Danny Elfman score. So some parts don’t feel all that original; fortunately, it’s still fun to watch, and that compensates for a lot of perceived shortcomings.

Yes, the production is loaded with all those Tim Burton trademarks listed earlier. With that candied Disney glaze on top of it, however, the taste is not so bitter or run-of-the-mill. After all, Disney first made an animated version of Alice In Wonderland nearly 60 years ago, and that version is trippy and wild, too. It’s another remake from this director, but his aesthetic was a natural fit for the project. It renewed my faith that Tim Burton still has the talent to someday craft a career-topping work of cinematic art.