ALICE IN WONDERLAND

Despite a circling sense of critical apathy centred about this film, it’s still clear that director Tim Burton has lost nothing of his visual flair. There are a number of moments in this film that stun in their technical beauty. I thought the Chesire Cat was particularly well done and that Wonderland itself (or Underland as it comes to be known in this movie) was realised in an interesting and visually arresting manner. Unfortunately for Alice all CGI worlds now have the misfortune of being judged in the shadow of James Cameron’s Avatar. If your fantasy movie world doesn’t have giant blue men and plants that glow to the touch then you’re doing something wrong.

Of course, this is absolute nonsense – I’d love to see what Tim Burton could come up with if he were granted a project with an Avataresque budget. There’s no doubting Burton’s standing as one of the foremost creative talents still cashing his cheques in Hollywood. Moreover, Lewis Caroll’s Adventures in Wonderland is one of the great uniquely imaginative works. Caroll effortlessly conjures up a fantastically childish yet dangerous world in which the extraordinary shakes hands with the banal. Nothing sums this up better, I would suggest, than the image of a smoking caterpillar. You can’t help but feel that Tim Burton should be in his element here. One curiously inventive spirit drawing off the work of another creative soul in order to create what should be some deliciously entertaining popcorn fodder – what could go wrong?

Being a smart cookie and not wishing to obstruct his own creative freedom, Burton opted against a straight adaption of one of Caroll’s works. Indeed, in an effort to further eradicate any prior expectations upon entering the film, we are told that this is not Wonderland – upon her first visit Alice (played this time round by Mia Wasikowska) misheard the name, which is, in fact, Underland. It must have been decided somewhere down the line that the film’s title Alice in Wonderland would pull in more customers than Alice in Underland or the simple but effective Alice. Since the producers clearly didn’t have the courage in their conviction I too shall refer to Underland as Wonderland to avoid confusion.

Alice, now 19 years old, is presented as a woman out of time. At least the script strains to make this apparent – we know that she is somewhat anachronistic because she refuses to wear stockings and gains no satisfaction from conversing with the local dignitaries. The problem, it seems, is rooted in her rather wild imagination. Disillusioned with her real life – where she is proposed to by the goofy Hamish Ascot (Leo Bill) she neglects her responsibilities to chase a white rabbit in a waistcoat down a rabbit hole and back into Wonderland. Alice whose memory cannot recollect her past adventures in Wonderland believes she is in a dream world, full of surreal images and talking animals. It soon becomes clear that Alice is to play an important role in shaping the future of Wonderland – it is she that is prophesised to slay the Jabberwocky and put an end to the tumultuous civil war between the nefarious Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter) and the commendable White Queen.

Despite confessing that I was subject to a number of bewitching images and sequences, the overall mood and tone of this film often feels way off kilter. To put it simply, Wonderland is just too glum – In Burtonian terms it can be too Sleepy Hollow when it should be Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Wonderland should awaken in us a sense of childish glee, instead the world it evokes is an ominous and morose place – almost as if the gothic trappings of Mike Leigh’s Vera Drake bled through onto an otherwise pleasant aesthetic. I understand that all good fantasy worlds have their shades of grey, but for my liking, there are one or two too many withered trees in Wonderland. The proceedings aren’t helped by 3D glasses which suck out about a third of the colour from the screen making the colour palette appear even more lifeless than it already is.

Whilst impressed by the Chesire Cat, Maynard the dog and a couple of other CGI critters, I was not left with an overall sense of satisfaction. Tweedledee and Tweedledum (to whom Matt Lucas lends both his voice and his face) have their character model absurdly inflated to the extent that they lose their reality (even in the sense of a fantastic reality – a sense of realism is equally important in a fantasy world, to prevent the whole piece feeling like something of a damp squib). This is equally the case with Absolem the caterpillar, the white rabbit and the various other animals that occupy the story. The failure of the CGI in this respect has the effect of drawing the audience out of the story and disrupting what should be a smooth viewing experience. The story itself is a barebones affair which fails to offer the visuals any heft or weight. We’ve seen the whole ‘hero comes between two warring factions’ plotline a number of times before and Alice in Wonderland adds nothing new to the proceedings.

Mia Wasikowska makes for a good Alice, approaching every challenge with a kind of steely innocence. It’s a performance that’s all the more impressive given that much of her performance would have been spent framed by a blue screen as she talks to a designated mark somewhere on the floor. Johnny Depp a Burton regular has some fun putting his spin on the Mad Hatter. Yet it’s Helena Bonham Carter who steals the show, seemingly treating her performance as a homage to Miranda Richardson in Blackadder Season 2. It is she alone that seems to tap into just the right level of creepiness, oddness and humour.