Disney has done a retelling of a classic story that they themselves told over 50 years ago: Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. This might be the first time Disney has remade one of their own classic-era movies, though calling this a remake of their 1951 film is a bit of a stretch: the original was an animated musical, whereas this version, directed by Tim Burton, is not a musical and is only partly animated, using a mix of CGI and live action. Without rehashing too much of my recent review of two earlier Alice films, the challenge of adapting Carroll's work (most versions incorporate the original Wonderland story and its sequel Through the Looking Glass) is that there really is no traditional narrative arc. Alice's adventures are dreamlike, not logical, and don't exactly have rising and falling action or climaxes. Burton's version has some pluses, but stumbles in its use of a logical storyline with overused elements of quest and coming-of-age narratives.
In this version, set in the Victorian age in which Carroll's books are set, Alice is a teenage girl on the verge of womanhood; at a big summer lawn party, her simp of a boyfriend is set to propose publicly, but she's not ready for marriage. During the party, she sees a white rabbit in a waistcoat hopping through the shrubs and follows him down a rabbit hole to Wonderland (or Underland, as its inhabitants call it). The cleverest conceit here is that Alice has been here before, in half-remembered dreams from her childhood, and all the folks she runs into, from the Rabbit to the Caterpillar to the Mad Hatter, keep asking if she's the right Alice. Of course, she has to come to realize who she really is and embrace her destiny, which is to free the Wonderlanders from the tyranny of the Red Queen by fighting the monstrous Jabberwocky with the Vorpal Sword, as foretold by a magical manuscript.
The best part of the film is the first half-hour or so, before the narrative kicks in, when Burton is more or less directly adapting Carroll. The atmosphere is appropriately magical and a little creepy, and the characters are realized wonderfully, most of them acted by people in motion-capture outfits and produced on screen by a combination of live faces and CGI bodies. Best are Alan Rickman as the Caterpillar and Stephen Fry as The Cheshire Cat. Of the two name-above-the-title stars, Helena Bonham-Carter shines brightest as the whimsically wicked Queen; Johnny Depp, as the Hatter, seems to be acting (or overacting) in a whole different film, one in which he might have been good, but it's not this one. A little bit of Depp in an orange fright wig and crazy green eyes goes a long way, and by the end I had lost all interest in both Depp and the quest storyline. Anne Hathaway as the White Queen is supposed to be a "good guy," but she's actually rather creepy; ironically, an actor who has made a career out of creepy roles, Crispin Glover, is remarkably understated as Stayne, assistant to the Red Queen. Mia Wasikowski does a very nice job as Alice. Visually, Burton comes close to getting it right, but he needed a different screenplay. This is now in DVD from Disney, though not in 3D as it was exhibited theatrically.
Disney has done a retelling of a classic story that they themselves told over 50 years ago: Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. This might be the first time Disney has remade one of their own classic-era movies, though calling this a remake of their 1951 film is a bit of a stretch: the original was an animated musical, whereas this version, directed by Tim Burton, is not a musical and is only partly animated, using a mix of CGI and live action. Without rehashing too much of my recent review of two earlier Alice films, the challenge of adapting Carroll's work (most versions incorporate the original Wonderland story and its sequel Through the Looking Glass) is that there really is no traditional narrative arc. Alice's adventures are dreamlike, not logical, and don't exactly have rising and falling action or climaxes. Burton's version has some pluses, but stumbles in its use of a logical storyline with overused elements of quest and coming-of-age narratives.
In this version, set in the Victorian age in which Carroll's books are set, Alice is a teenage girl on the verge of womanhood; at a big summer lawn party, her simp of a boyfriend is set to propose publicly, but she's not ready for marriage. During the party, she sees a white rabbit in a waistcoat hopping through the shrubs and follows him down a rabbit hole to Wonderland (or Underland, as its inhabitants call it). The cleverest conceit here is that Alice has been here before, in half-remembered dreams from her childhood, and all the folks she runs into, from the Rabbit to the Caterpillar to the Mad Hatter, keep asking if she's the right Alice. Of course, she has to come to realize who she really is and embrace her destiny, which is to free the Wonderlanders from the tyranny of the Red Queen by fighting the monstrous Jabberwocky with the Vorpal Sword, as foretold by a magical manuscript.
The best part of the film is the first half-hour or so, before the narrative kicks in, when Burton is more or less directly adapting Carroll. The atmosphere is appropriately magical and a little creepy, and the characters are realized wonderfully, most of them acted by people in motion-capture outfits and produced on screen by a combination of live faces and CGI bodies. Best are Alan Rickman as the Caterpillar and Stephen Fry as The Cheshire Cat. Of the two name-above-the-title stars, Helena Bonham-Carter shines brightest as the whimsically wicked Queen; Johnny Depp, as the Hatter, seems to be acting (or overacting) in a whole different film, one in which he might have been good, but it's not this one. A little bit of Depp in an orange fright wig and crazy green eyes goes a long way, and by the end I had lost all interest in both Depp and the quest storyline. Anne Hathaway as the White Queen is supposed to be a "good guy," but she's actually rather creepy; ironically, an actor who has made a career out of creepy roles, Crispin Glover, is remarkably understated as Stayne, assistant to the Red Queen. Mia Wasikowski does a very nice job as Alice. Visually, Burton comes close to getting it right, but he needed a different screenplay. This is now in DVD from Disney, though not in 3D as it was exhibited theatrically.
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