Video review: "Alice in Wonderland"

The worst thing about sitting through "Alice in Wonderland" is the dawning realization that director Tim Burton, once one of the most original voices in Hollywood, has become king of the crappy remakes.

The movie-going public simply did not need a new version of "Planet of the Apes" or "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," and the same goes for "Alice."

Festooned with computer-generated critters and the now-obligatory kooky Johnny Depp performance, "Alice" is essentially a sequel to the original Lewis Carroll books. Alice (Mia Wasikowska), now a willful teen, refuses an arranged marriage to a wealthy suitor for a return trip to Wonderland.

It seems in her absence the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter, her head ballooned by CG puffery) has usurped the throne of the White Queen (Anne Hathaway) and is lopping off heads at a record pace.

Depp plays the Mad Hatter, bit player in the Carroll books but now Alice's best friend/muse. It's a performance steeped in its own weird sauce, a spray of sibilant nonsense and rousing Braveheart-esque speeches.

In the unholy and wholly unnecessary matrimony between Tim Burton and "Alice," it's clear that originality doesn't live here anymore.

The film is available as a single DVD or a Blu-ray/DVD combo pack. Video extras are OK for the DVD version, and expand considerably with Blu-ray.

The DVD includes a making-of documentary, a featurette about the film's visual effects, and another about how Depp constructed his latest crazy character -- including digitally enhancing his eyes so that he resembled Elijah Wood in drag queen makeup.

In addition, the Blu-ray has featurettes on creating the Red Queen, the White Queen, musical score, sets, stunts and even the Hatter's Futterwhacken Dance.

For myself, I wish Tim Burton would kick all the big-money productions and computer imagery to the curb, and concentrate on small, clever concoctions of his own recipe. These days it feels like he's baking someone else's cakes.

Movie: 1.5 stars out of four
Extras: 3.5 stars

Review: "Alice in Wonderland"

Why?

That's my one-word review of Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland." Why does this movie exist? Does it add anything to the Lewis Carroll stories? Does it have a purpose for being beyond dollars-and-cents rationalizing? If it had never been made, would the cinematic world be poorer for it?

I've been a fan of director Tim Burton's comically twisted sensibilities for a long time, but lately he's in a rut. Rather than pursuing original stories ("Edward Scissorhands") or loopy take-offs on reality ("Ed Wood"), he's tackling big-budget revivals of well-known intellectual properties -- "Sweeney Todd," "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," "Planet of the Apes."

Burton's gone from being one of the most vibrant, freshest voices in Hollywood to the king of the remakes. His distinctive style has been packaged and co-opted. You can practically hear the moneymen plotting:

"Hey, no one's made an 'Alice' movie in awhile, let's do it up with a lot of CG for the animals and add in some battle scenes for the teens and slather on some of that Tim Burton kookiness. And we'll get Johnny Depp to do one of his over-the-top nutty characters."

Speaking of which: The eclectic voices that call out to Depp have often aimed true -- his Keith-Richards-meets-Pepe-Le-Pew take on Captain Jack Sparrow made the first "Pirates of the Caribbean" a delectable mash-up of spectacle and spontaneity. But it had gotten old by the second go-round, and his Michael Jackson-inspired Willy Wonka was just strange for the sake of strangeness.

Ditto for his Mad Hatter, who seems to put on his personalities like he does his blue-and-pink makeup. One minute Hatter, as he's nicknamed, is speaking in a rambling, lisping spray of non-sequitors ("How is a raven like a writing desk?"), and then he switches into a strident Scottish brogue.

By the end of the film, he even gets a big ol' Braveheart sword to complete the strange ensemble.

The Hatter, of course, was only a minor player in the original novel by Lewis Carroll, but here he's elevated to sidekick/muse for Alice (Mia Wasikowska).

Carroll actually wrote two Alice books, and most movie versions have simply crammed together characters and story elements from each. This new film (screenplay by Linda Woolverton) goes one further, by essentially positing itself as a sequel.

Alice is now 19 and about to be married off to a haughty young lord, and is plagued by dreams about white rabbits and red queens. Little does she realize these are actually memories from her childhood visit to Wonderland (or Underland, as the natives insist is the correct name).

A quick dash down the rabbit hole, and a few rapid changes in size later, Alice stumbles upon the White Rabbit, Dormouse, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, and the Blue Caterpillar. It seems in her absence the Red Queen has usurped the crown of the White Queen (Anne Hathaway), and is ordering the lopping off of heads at a prodigious rate.

Computer imagery is incorporated into many of the characters. The animals are all CG, but even the Red Queen (played by Helena Bonham Carter) has her head swelled to watermelon proportions. (Depp's eyes are similarly super-sized.)

Alice sets off on a search for the Vorpal Blade, guarded by a Bandersnatch, to be used against the fearsome serpent Jabberwocky at the climactic battle on Frabjous Day -- all bits, by the way, contained in Carroll's nonsense poetry. Oh, and Hatter will celebrate by doing his Futterwhacken dance.

Considered apart, some of these ornaments are amusing enough in their own right. But taken together, Burton's "Alice in Wonderland" is an exercise in cynical regurgitation.

1.5 stars

Reeling Backward: "Alice in Wonderland" (1933)

To bone up for this Friday's release of Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland," I figured it would be a good idea to do a little research on previous film versions and the source material. As a boy, I didn't have much contact with the original book by Lewis Carroll, so I felt I needed some education.

I'm glad I did.

First of all, I hadn't realized that Lewis Carroll was a pseudonym for Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, who reputedly came up with the basis for the story while on a boat trip with a friend and his three daughters.

The other thing I didn't know is that there was more than one book. The 1865 "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" was followed seven years later by "Through the Looking-Glass." In the many film adaptations, characters and story elements from both books are usually mashed up together. This isn't as hard as it sounds, since the novels were part of the literary nonsense movement that loved to play around with reality and perceptions.

So the Red Queen, Humpty Dumpty, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, and the White Knight all came from the second book, and have been shoe-horned into the movies.

The first Alice story begins when she chases the White Rabbit down his hole, while the second began when Alice becomes convinced there's a whole other world on the other side of the large mirror in her drawing room, and passes through it. The 1933 film version directed by Norman Z. McLeod from a screenplay by Joseph L. Mankiewicz contains both entries: First she goes through the looking glass, then she falls down the rabbit hole.

There have been many film versions of the Alice stories -- including a Disney animated version and at least three silent films -- and none of them are really definitive. The 1933 is probably best known, mostly because it starred then-fledgling actors Gary Cooper and Cary Grant in small roles. (The photo accompanying this column is a publicity still of Grant with the costume he wore to play the Mock Turtle.)

The film hasn't been available on video until now, but a new DVD is being released in conjunction with the opening of Tim Burton's version, which I have no doubt will be a distinctive departure.

I guess the thing that most struck me while watching the 77-minute film (cut down from the original 90) is how easily it could have fit into the oeuvre of surrealists like Salvador Dali and Luis Bunuel, or even the acid-induced fantasias of the 1960s and '70s.

I suppose small children would enjoy the ridiculous nature of the goings-on, but I have to say I found the film rather tedious. It's a mash-up of Victorian etiquette and absurdist imagery -- such as Grant's Mock Turtle, a play on mock turtle soup. He's made up of different animal parts, with a cow's head, and isn't very happy about it.

My favorite scene was the introduction of the Red Queen, ordering "Off with their heads" for virtually everyone she meets. I did like the game of croquet played with flamingos as mallets.

Charlotte Henry plays Alice, and W.C. Fields turns up as Humpty Dumpty, and a very grumpy version, too. A young Billy Barty had small roles as two different babies, even though he was 9 years old at the time. It wouldn't do to have the Duchess tossing a real baby up into the area, so a Little Person was cast instead.

Gary Cooper's role as the very aged White Knight appears near the end of the film, with Alice calling him the nicest person she's met on her strange journey -- even though he keeps falling out of his saddle.

The Mad Hatter has only a small appearance in the book and movie, so it'll be interesting to see him turned into the main character in Burton's version, with Johnny Depp tackling the role. With all the twisting, changing and amalgamation of Lewis Carroll's stories in the 1933 and other film versions, I can't imagine that the new one will somehow be more offensive than the others.

1.5 stars



(Apologies for the video; since it hasn't been available on video before, all I could find were clips someone got from filming their TV when it played on Turner Classic Movies.)