Movie Review: Alice in Wonderland (2010)

Tim Burton's new 3-D carnival, Alice in Wonderland, is a wild amusement that would probably be given more credit if Burton hadn't already squeezed so much out of his own schtick. It's adventurous, absurd, playful, and curious, but its substance is entirely in the style. Even so, as an adventure story judged as pure entertainment, it's a modest but certain success.

The story begins with Alice, a petulant teenager, being tricked into attending her own engagement party, where she comes face to face with all the pettiness and frustration of the adult world. She escapes from the proposal of a wealthy, uptight suitor by dashing into a conveniently placed hedge maze and falling into a very large rabbit hole. There, she finds a strange world that resembles her own recurring dreams... a place with a smoking caterpillar and a mad hatter, talking animals, and a kingdom in the shadow of a rivalry between two sisters: a pacifist white Queen (who's happy to condone violence, even though she doesn't participate in it) and a tyrannous Red Queen who seems to have upset the balance of good and evil in this colorful bizarro-world.

The story, as a whole, is a riff on the original Alice in Wonderland that doesn't make much of its departure. The backstory that Alice (Mia Wasikowska) is the long-lost child messiah, returning to rescue the kingdom from ruin, seems largely unnecessary, an excuse to use Lewis Carroll's images in service of a more action-oriented plot. We know going in that the Red Queen must be the villain, and we realize almost immediately that all the other familiar characters are going to be allies in the revolt. These familiar characters include a number of forgettable supporting parts: Tweedledee and Tweedledum, the loony March Hare, the original very late White Rabbit, the Dormouse, the Cheshire Cat, Absolem the Caterpillar, and a hunting dog to add a bit of wounded pathos. Alongside these are the key players, who are given at least a bit more attention: the noble-if-a-bit-weird White Queen (Anne Hathaway), the bullying Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter), and the Mad Hatter, a part redeemed by Johnny Depp, who manages to make the character interesting.

Depp's performance deserves a remark here. His Mad Hatter is probably the most interesting of the characters, including (and especially) Alice herself, who's just a mannequin on which to hang lessons about individuality and self-discovery. Depp's Mad Hatter is a different story: he's a nostalgic Wonderland loyalist, the wise and purposeful lunatic, a classic "trickster" figure who prompts most of the major plot developments. Depp manages to take his manic, absurdist part and bring something genuinely sad to it, even at his silliest moments. The Hatter channels a sense of defeat, even unto the end of the story, which is really the only way we ever feel an emotional connection to Wonderland itself.

Article Author: Jesse Miksic

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