Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland

When he started his career as an illustrator and animator at Disney, the studio didn’t know what to do with the talent of Tim Burton. They told him his concept drawings for Fox and the Hound looked like roadkill and let him make some small shorts. He would soon leave to direct Pee Wee on his Big Adventure and Burton spent much of his career carving out a unique style that was the very antithesis of Disney. With the prodigal son of the “mouse house” returning to direct a Disney Alice in Wonderland, I knew I was in for an interesting balancing act of studio vs. director.

The best way to describe Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland is a third act after Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass. The story plays very similar to the 1980′s Return to Oz, as Alice falls back into Wonderland to find that the world of her childhood adventure is far from the way she left it. What plays out is a Return of the King/Return of the Jedi action finale with characters that used to just be goofy set pieces taking arms. A detailed mythology was layered on the original story and actual names created for characters like The Red Queen.

This was an extremely unique take to adapting the source material that added a weight to the story that hasn’t been seen before, but the fleeting look at the events of the original story  made me long to see Burton take on the original story. If Burton adapted the first two books as one movie and then made this movie, I think the final scenes would have had a greater weight. Even if these are characters that basically everyone knows, sadly few know them from the books anymore, but in their Disney cartoon incarnations. Imagine watching Return of the Jedi without ever seeing any other Star Wars movie, that is the weird feeling one gets from Alice in Wonderland. There are people you know are good, an obviously bad guy with a breathing problem, and then a bunch of little bears.

The biggest problem I had with Alice in Wonderland was this was a movie obviously torn between two very different visions. There are beautiful glimpses of what Tim Burton could have done with these characters unfettered. The scene when Alice sits down for tea with the March Hare and Mad Hatter at a table full of broken dishes and rotten food, seemingly untouched for the decade Alice has been away. As the Hatter describes a bloody revolution against the Queen, the March Hare shakes uncontrollably from caffeine addiction. That is the Burton. Sadly, the film walks a friendly road of barely PG. From the rating description, it seems without the smoking caterpillar, the film would have been G.

Thankfully, the movie has Tim Burton’s unmatched attention to visual detail and character design. Almost every second of this movie could be frozen and put on a wall as a work of art and there is a beautiful fitting victorian oil painting appearance to everything. More thought goes into the design of the backgrounds of a Burton movie than go into the entirety of most movies. This is basically an animation, the only actor who is not untouched by computers was Alice herself, but it hadn’t crossed my mind until writing this review.

Performance wise, Helena Bonham Carter and Johnny Depp were as solid as always at being Helena Bonham Carter and Johnny Depp (my only issue being the Hatter’s scottish accent seemed to come and go). Mia Wasikowska was a strong lead as Alice and it was nice to see her become a strong-willed character and not just an observer. The winner of the movie to me was by-far Crispin Glover, who seemed to be having the time of his life in the role of the Red Queen’s second in command, Stayne. How Burton and Glover never worked together before completely baffles me, as they are perfect together. The moments that seemed least Disney touched came from his completely demented character, who bordered sometimes on pedophiliac sociopath. While every other actor seemed to actively remember they were in a Disney movie, Glover played an aggressively dark part, which ironically harkened back the closest to classic Disney villains.

Is Alice in Wonderland worth seeing in theaters? If you love Tim Burton and the original stories, I say yes. Based on how packed the theaters were this weekend, I think the film will be doing quite well for itself.

Side-note: Its the elephant in the room these days, but I really didn’t want to mention it in the proper review. I saw Alice in Wonderland in IMAX 3D. The 3D was handled tastefully, and I never once felt like it was a gimmick (i’m looking at you Christmas Carol). Maybe because it seems like every third movie I see is 3D these days, but it’s losing its novelty and I started to barely notice it towards the end. It is nice to see directors to start to use it for depth and not throwing things in people’s faces.

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