Cranky at the Movies

I like Tim Burton. His CORPSE BRIDE was funny and inventive. But perhaps that was because he was working with original material, because his adaptation of existing material with ALICE IN WONDERLAND is a disaster. [WARNING: Spoilers Ahead]

The book ALICE IN WONDERLAND is dream material, both when she plops down that hole and when she melts through the looking glass. As such, it is delicate, fanciful, episodic, connected by the logic of the unconscious rather than of the mundane world. Burton has ignored all this to shove the story into the tired Procrustean bed of a quest: Alice must find the vorpal sword and slay the Jabberwocky. As if that weren't enough borrowing from other material, at the end the movie morphs into THE WIZARD OF OZ. Alice gets sent back home by the White Queen, dressed in a Glinda the Good Witch outfit, after saying a tearful good-bye to her allies the Scarecrow -- oops, I mean the Mad Hatter -- a large dog, and others. I half expected someone to say, "Just click the ruby slippers together three times..."

This mess is getting decent reviews in many places. I can't see why (maybe it's me). Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter (as the Mad Hatter and the Red Queen) are both very good. But the movie lacks all of Lewis Carroll's charm. Visually it's garish, in bright primary colors, with nothing of the dream-world delicacy.

In short, I hated it.