Alice In Wonderland
Lewis Carroll may possibly have been a pervert, but he was also a genius with mathematics and as a storyteller had an imagination that was unparalleled by anyone up to that time, as seen by the enduring popularity of his Alice stories. This 2010 adaptation by Tim Burton is not so much a retelling of the popular tale, but rather an unauthorized SEQUEL to the original Alice In Wonderland, this time showing Alice as a grown young woman being pushed by her family into marrying a foppish young lord, before running away after the ubiquitous White Rabbit and falling down the rabbit hole once again, where she must rediscover her true self (ala Hook) and fulfill a prophecy to save Wonderland from the tyranny that has fallen over it. In the key role of Alice, Mia Wasikowska is serviceably appealing, bringing the eccentric spirit of the character to life while still being a proper young lady without putting the viewer off. Most (if not all) the hype though was built around the casting of Johnny Depp as The Mad Hatter, originally a mostly useless psychopath in previous versions but here is practically presented as a patron saint. Alas, it is merely another dose of Depp being âquirkyâ again, almost too much for his own good, and while he and the rest of the cast try hard, itâs easy to remember that Burton and Co. have pretty much cornered the market on making âweirdâ a legitimate franchise, save for Helena Bonham-Carter bringing an understated subtlety to the role of the Red Queen and Crispin Glover literally reinventing himself from his hopelessly dorky George McFly persona into the Knave Of Hearts, kind of an Aragorn type with a very dark side. However, Anne Hathaway brings little to the table in a mannered performance as the White Queen, and the rest of the cast is mostly CGI voiceovers by people like Michael Sheen and Alan Rickman. The film starts off quite slow and badly, literally lurching out of the gate as it starts to recreate verbatim the events of the original story, with Burton rushing things through and pushing everything on us at once, so that we start to get bored easily since we all know where the story will seemingly go, but once we get settled into the idea that this is actually a follow-up, and the story starts to go in new directions, the viewer starts to get drawn in quite a bit and in particular enjoy Bonham Carterâs performance, even as several of the narrative elements borrow heavily from both the Chronicles Of Narnia and Lord Of The Rings. Nonetheless, the visuals are quite stunning, some of the CGI creations reach a certain level of empathy, and even crazy Depp starts to grow on us some as everything leads up to a final battle between Alice and the Queenâs monstrous minion known as the Jabberwocky. While the script fails to dig deeper beyond the shallowness of Carrollâs original caricatured denizens, ultimately the film does find some heart due mostly to the leading ladyâs ability to keep us rooted in her character. In the end, while not a smashing success, a sustainable kidâs movie that suitably carries on the story of the (superior) Disney versionâŚ
7/10