REVIEW: ALICE IN WONDERLAND

Tim Burton and Lewis Carroll are two LSD addled peas in a pod, each the nutty Master of All Things Macabre for their respective generations. So you'd think Burton's adaptation of Caroll's magnum opus would pan out wonderfully onscreen, right? Somehow, wrong. In telling the world famous, darkly comic tale of Alice (Mia Wasikowka's) journey down a rabbit hole and into a lopsided alternate universe (I won't provide a synopsis, you know the rest), Burton and his cast and crew occasionally strike brilliant notes, but thanks to some key missteps this one's mostly discordant noise. Disney tries to kiddify things, attempting to impart morals and purpose into a story that lacks both. Oh well, I expected that. There's a weird, jarringly adult subplot about Alice's brother-in-law, but its brief enough that I suppose I could ignore it if necessary. But the real nail in the coffin here is a huge conceptual mistake was glaringly apparent to me from the film's opening scenes. Alice, normally a child of about eight or nine, is aged about ten years here, on the cusp of adulthood. This film finds her returning to Wonderland-Underland, as it's called here-for a second visit, not out of curiosity, but to flee the life of sexual frustration and societal pressure that she's stuck with back home in stone-faced 19th century England. I don't know who came up with this idea. Was it Burton? Or screenwriter Linda Woolverton? Either way, it's a stupefyingly dumb clunker of a choice that damn near becomes the pictures Achilles heel. Alice is not just a character whose seeing the world through a strange new looking-glass-she's our looking glass, whose wonderment and dread become ours precisely because this is all new to her-her childlike delight allows us to absorb the story with the rapt attention and excitement of youth. Here, however, she's an agitated teen who isn't any happier about being in Underland than she was about being on Earth. Despite all the techno-wonders Burton and co. surround her with-and, make no mistake, the film looks great, an explosion of gothic, surreal splendor rendered in a panoply of eye-pleasing colors-she's constantly whining about how the place is just a bad dream, one from which she can't wait to wake up. Oh, what fun! We're discovering a brave new world with a tour guide who...couldn't care less. It's like going on vacation with that one relative who bitches about everything from the hotel room to the waiting lines-who cares what the destination is? The journey's not gonna be much fun when you take an albatross like that along. Soon, Alice's exaggerated mopiness gets grating, then infuriating, and, finally, escalates to the level where I whispered "Shut up!" under my breath, as if to will her into silence. Perhaps this approach might have worked best in a sequel to this film (Caroll tried said approach in his sequel to the book), when we, like Alice, had already gotten to know the world. As it is, this is our first go 'round, and because she's jaded, so are we. But now I'M getting jaded, so let's talk about some of the pluses here-and there are a few. First and foremost are the delightful trio of actors you've seen on all the posters-Johnny Depp, Anne Hathaway, and Helena Bonham Carter. Depp's Mad Hatter is a lisping, accent-juggling delight. The man's always been a little loony, but here it's as if he's been freed from any tethers of human normalcy-when he delivers the famous quote about the raven and the writing-desk, you chuckle because it's actually the sanest thing he's said thus far. Hathaway's White Queen exudes imperial majesty and a surprising twinge of maternal warmth. But Bonham Carter gets best in show-her evil monarch is the ultimate Queen Bitch, dishing out verbal lashings with an icy, poker-faced abandon that inspires great big audience belly-laughs even as it condemns onscreen characters to the most dismal of fates. Also worth mentioning are the special effects-the CGI animals are so flesh-and-bone realistic that they make those Narnian beavers look like sock puppets, and Bonham Carter's massive cranium is a massive technical achievement. Danny Elfman's score, creepy and choir-heavy, lends the right touch of eerie beauty to DP Darius Wolski's sweeping shots of Burton's ingeniously designed locales. But just as you're getting into the awe of it all, along comes that bitchy Alice girl to pout and pout and pout, until ultimately you just long to be back in your own world. Carroll enthusiasts and Burton lovers should check it out on DVD (the 3D adds next to nothing here). The rest of you can do without. C+