Tim Burton's adaptation of Alice in Wonderland (combined with his poem "Jabberwocky" and the other Alice novel Through the Looking Glass) is pretty much as you'd expect: a fantastical fractured fairy tale with captivatingly strange talking creatures, trademarked curved branches, Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter.
Sadly, it doesn't surprise.
The movie is as meandering as the rabbit hole...twisting, turning, seeming not to have a purpose other than to share quirky visions of Underland. And, in fair disclosure, I am quite tired of CGI created worlds (a little goes a long way), and while it showcases an imagination without bounds, I still love (and always will) a fresh, honest-to-goodness, hand-created vision (see: Fantastic Mr. Fox). His view of the world I pictured to be green and lush and full of wonderful colorful creatures looked like it had been bombed out. It was a wasteland in shades of gray and black. It seemed like everything had to be tampered with: the length of someone's legs, the shape of a head, the color of eyes...everything. Mr. Burton couldn't keep his fingers off the computer long enough to make a movie that the audience would care about.
Oddly enough, those members of the court following the Red Queen made themselves appear to be odd and misshapen to please her highness by ADDING PROSTHETICS to their bodies and faces that kept coming unglued, threatening their very oddness.
Comical irony? Perhaps. But it was, to clarify, very much part of the plot.
Alice is visiting Underland for a second time, although she cannot remember the first time. She doesn't want to be there, but she doesn't want to be above ground, either, where a sniveling red-headed louse is awaiting her response to a marriage proposal. However, she doesn't try very hard to leave. In fact, she doesn't try very hard to do anything. She just is. And she just frowns. Unlike the lines I remember reading "...curiouser and curiouser...", our Alice seems bored.
Along the way (although I'm never quite sure where she's going), she meets the expected array of characters. The White Rabbit is a great representation of the original, charming and hurried in his tiny waistcoat, clutching his watch. The March Hare looks like a meth addict with twitches to spare. Tweedledee and Tweedledum are round, dough boys who argue and cling to one another. The Cheshire Cat, gray and electric blue (he should be pink and purple!) is the most fascinating, appearing here and disappearing there. Oh, and don't forget the opium smoking caterpillar, who is angry and unamused by our Alice.
In the human (and I use the term loosely) camp, we have the Mad Hatter, Johnny Deep as Elijah Wood.
He's a red headed, gleaming emerald eyed, nut job who speaks with the voice of a Scotsman (why?). He weird, for sure, and doesn't seem to make sense. He's got a great two second nod to his previous incarnation as Edward, in which he yanks Alice's too large dress, cuts away at the fabric, and creates a Barbie Doll sized gown. The rest of the time, he's too skewed to worry about. On the other side of the coin, there's Burton's muse, Helena Bonham Carter as the Red Queen. Her big head ("Big head, big head, big head!") is amusing, as are her heart painted lips, but she's difficult to understand save for her incessant whining. "Off with his head!" She's mean and angry and unliked but feared by all. Last, but not least, is the White Queen, played by a icy Anne Hathaway, painted black on her nails, her eyebrows, and her lips for no apparent reason. She takes on a Snow White-esque affectation in which she flails her arms around and winks at the woodland creatures.
In the end, the White Queen needs a champion, and you're supposed to wonder if Alice, who has expressed no desire, shown no spunk, has no drive will step up --- legend says she's the only one who can --- to fight the Red Queen's champion, the dastardly looking dragon, a reject from a darker version of Eragon, called the Jabberwocky. I'll let you guess who wins.
But I will tell you that the Mad Hatter does a totally ridiculous, turn your head in embarrassment dance upon victory. It's unexplainably bad.
While the book, published in 1865 and arguably one of the best satires on modern culture available, operates as both a fantasy for children with spooky queens, dark rabbit holes, and tea parties attended by bizarrely self-absorbed animals and people, and a parody for adults of the upper class told with a wink and a nudge, the levels of narcissism reached by chattering and bumbling characters who have nary a concern for another previously unseen.
The movie adaptation was bound to be made by Mr. Burton, the king of strange tales. He shines when creating his own original works of art (see: Nightmare Before Christmas, Beetlejuice, and Edward Scissorhands) and needs an editing eye when working from someone else's specs (see: Charlie and The Chocolate Factory and Batman). He'd like to teach you a lesson as you fall down the rabbit hole, to offer a cynical take on a fairy tale that appeals to both adults and children, but he mostly offers a muddled tale.
The lesson? Don't mess with classics. Create your own.
Reference: http://millhouselitterbox.blogspot.com/2010/03/alice-in-wonderland-movie-review.html
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