By Noah Redfield, Staff Writer
Once upon a time, there was a young visionary director called Tim Burton who lent his unique style to such modern fables as “Beetlejuice” and “Edward Scissorhands,” as well as the poignant character study about the art of filmmaking, “Ed Wood.” He was accompanied by an unusual acting talent called Johnny Depp, an off-kilter leading man who lent his remarkable physical grace to every character he portrayed. Together, they joined the ranks of Scorsese/De Niro and Herzog/Kinski as one of the seminal director-actor teams in the history of cinema.
Alas, the lure of fat paychecks and exhibitionist number-one spots at the box office got the better of them, and as they slipped into middle-age, their collaborations gradually became stale and soulless. They sacrificed depth for marketability. Eventually the gods of world cinema banished Depp and Burton to the land of sell-outs where they were forced to contemplate their insatiable greed for the rest of their days. The end…or was that simply a wonderful dream?
“Alice in Wonderland” is the kind of film an unimaginative fanboy dreams up on an IMDb message board. Every element arrives in a package so neat and uncontroversial that it lacks all of the texture and bite that the writings of Lewis Carroll may have had. All the creatures and landscapes are perfectly-rendered CGI concoctions that contain absolutely no weight or humanity whatsoever.
Watching these generic images in 3-D – a disingenuous war against piracy that has been disguised as “immersive” and “revolutionary” – doesn’t help. What exactly is so immersive about tea cups almost hitting you in the face? At least James Cameron tried experimenting with 3-D’s depth-of-field when he made “FernGully in Space.” Here, the effect is so cheap and gimmicky that I kept wishing the Red Queen would cry “off with his head” and let the 3-D axe end my suffering once and for all.
What exactly is so immersive about tea cups almost hitting you in the face?
If a camel is a horse designed by a committee, then “Alice in Wonderland” is a Tim Burton film designed by Disney fatcats in a boardroom. They spent so much time worrying about selling it as a product that they completely forgot about putting together a half-decent story. This Alice has no character arc; she is exactly the same by the end of the film, and therefore her journey is utterly pointless. The narrative thrust is so weak that they have to resort to a hollow battle scene in order to keep everyone awake.
Meanwhile, Depp’s Mad Hatter is so dull and phoned-in that one can barely call it acting (Unless putting on too much blush and a stupid wig counts.) Mia Wasikowska’s Alice is so wooden that I kept expecting the Cheshire Cat to use her left arm as a tree branch, and while Helena Bonham Carter’s Red Queen is mildly amusing, the odd chuckle here and there isn’t enough to save this exercise in fantasy sleepwalking.
I never thought Burton could make another film as hopelessly bland as “Planet of the Apes” but here it is. Save your money and either watch one of his early classics or simply watch the 1951 Disney classic again: It’s shorter, it’s funnier, and it’s infinitely trippier.