Dir. Tim Burton, US, 2010, 108 mins
Cast: Mia Wasikowska, Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham-Carter, Crispin Glover, Anne Hathaway
Review by Philippa Bradnock
Alice in Wonderland has been through many screen incarnations, each attempting to shave Lewis Carroll's unruly freeform narrative down to a feature film running time. Tim Burton's film takes the characters and the setting, but uses the poem-within-a-story, Jabberwocky as its plot inspiration. Wasikowska's Alice is a 19-year-old business-minded feminist who falls down the rabbit hole trying to escape a proposal from her dullard acquaintance, Hamish. The Wonderland she finds is ruled by the terrifying, cranially challenging Red Queen (Bonham-Carter). Alice has been mysteriously recalled to Wonderland to fight and slay the Jabberwocky, the monstrous centrepiece of the Red Queen's arsenal. She is aided by the Mad Hatter (Depp), and a resistance movement of Carroll's creatures.
Alice is a truly jaw-dropping spectacle. Filmed in 3D and mostly computer-generated, it feels like the cinematic medium has finally caught up with Burton's hallucinatory visions. The marvels of the book are rendered in bewildering, thrilling detail: flowers bicker among themselves, Alice grows and shrinks, the Red Queen's face blushes red with fury as she realises a disadvantage. It's incredible stuff, and the 3D seems entirely appropriate, as if we too are through the looking glass.
There are also some wonderful Burton touches: the White Queen is both saintly and also slightly irritating. She refuses to slay the Jabberwocky herself ('it is against my vows') and gags daintily at distasteful things. The Hatter is one of Depp's amazing creations, at once endearingly childlike and totally unhinged (he becomes a ranting Scot when roused to anger). When Alice's identity is questioned he counters, 'you're absolutely Alice, I'd know you anywhere.' and then to his compatriots, 'I'd know him anywhere.' Reassurance followed by the realisation that the speaker is a complete loon. The Red Queen has some excellent lines, delivered in Bonham-Carter's crisp Merchant-Ivory diction – who could possibly scream 'Off with their heads!' in a more deliciously hysterical way?
And yet, there is something disappointing about this incarnation of Alice . The polarisation of the two towering castles, the race to get to the predicted 'Frabjous Day' when Alice will kill the Jabberwocky, the fight between Good and Evil. It's all a bit too reminiscent of Lord of the Rings , a wonderful movie, but an awfully serious one. The plot-driven moments start to feel a bit too earnest, too sci-fi, and not in keeping with the playfulness of Alice , or of the opening scenes of the film. The closing music is by Avril Lavigne, a curious rock-style paean to Alice which makes one wonder if she could return, a sort of roving fighter heroine, turning up adventures in the Far East, where she heads in the closing scene.
Alice in Wonderland is a fantastical confection and each scene brings new wonders. But perhaps coherence has come at too great a cost to the original feel of the book, and to Burton's vision. As the Hatter says to Alice, 'you were much more muchier. You've lost your muchness.' As Alice in Wonderland went on its muchness seemed to dwindle too.
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