Alice au pays des merveilles

The setup of this movie sounds like the beginning of a good joke: "Tim Burton and Walt Disney walk into a bar..." You wouldn't think it possible, but it happened. Tim Burton, the master of dark, twisted fantasies where every story involves at least 1 corpse, teamed up with the studio known for bright pink bunnies and such.

The temptation is for Burton fans to expect a Burtonesque flick while Disney fans expect an accurate retelling of the 1951 Disney cartoon classic. Neither happened, not by a longshot.

What happened instead is something you just have to experience. Someone once told me that the root of beauty lies in contrast. A yellow flower in a field of yellow flowers isn't as beautiful as a yellow flower growing on a desolate battlefield of some war-torn desert. So with that in mind, this is a movie for people who can appreciate the contrast between Burton's sarcasm and Disney's innocence. I'll give you an example...

In the Disney cartoon, as well as Lewis Carroll's original story, the Red Queen runs around commanding "Off with his head!" at anyone who irritates her, but of course the Red King quietly follows behind whispering "You're pardoned" each time, thus saving the executioner a ton of gory axe blades. But in this version, in a brief but stark moment, we learn that the beheadings are quite real. And then bam, we quickly return to Disney territory where we are entertained by the banter of cute talking mice.

Literally, I rubbed my eyes, turned to the person sitting next to me and asked, "Wait... did we just see a bunch of decapitated heads??" Confusing at first, this volley between macabre & merry becomes the charm of this film. I should add that I counted at least 3 characters who got an eyeball disgorged. And yet, in Disneyesque fashion you never really feel a sense of menace; it's mostly in good fun.

I purposely didn't mention the plot until now because, to me, the story was secondary to the overall vibe of the film. But in case you're wondering, this is *not* a retelling of Disney's, Carroll's or anyone else's "Alice in Wonderland". This is sort of a sequel to the original where Alice, now 19 years old and about to get married, gets reconnected with her long forgotten adventure of youth. In that respect, it reminded me of how the movie "Hook" was sort of a sequel to "Peter Pan".

To me, that's the only department where this film lost a few points, because it felt like they were weaving too much of a story into a tale that was inherently a stream-of-consciousness that mimicked the randomness of a dream (Lewis Carroll himself invented the story on the spot while rowing Alice Pleasance Liddell and her sisters on a pond). This version follows more of a straighforward plot to defeat the bad guys, and in so doing, it got away from the dreamlike feeling of all other versions I've seen.

Johnny Depp... of course JD steals the show with his alternately endearing and terrifying Mad Hatter. He plays the role as someone suffering from severe PTSD which manifests itself in multiple personalities. There's his normal, gentle, lisping Hatter. And then there's his cruel, dark Scottish Highlander Hatter who sounds like Sean Connery just lost his place in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Honorable mention goes to Crispin Glover (Marty McFly's nerdy father in "Back to the Future") who plays a very chilling Jack of Hearts. And another honorable mention goes to Anne Hathaway who plays the angelic but somewhat ditzy White Queen.

Special effects are good for 2010 but a bit dated for today. The best effects are the subtle ones such as the way the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter) was depicted as having an enormous, bulbous head. I also thought the "Drink Me, Eat Me" scene where Alice shrinks & grows was done very well.

In the end, although I had been expecting something of a trainwreck, I think the odd pairing of Burton & Disney was a success. So what's next? Maybe horror master John Carpenter ("Halloween") does a teencom with Lindsay Lohan & Jamie Lee Curtis called "Freaky Friday the 13th"?

I can usually find something to engage with and love in any film. It is a sort of challenge and promise to myself to do so -- as a choice in building a life. But this movie was a nadir in my adventure.

The Alice stories are special, special absolutely and special to me.

For many people, the stories are simply amusing nonsense for children, something to be fuzzily remembered in the same way as, say, Peter Pan or a Grimm's tale. But it is anything but. Carroll advanced our ability to speak to ourselves when he polished the story and sent it to us.

One can hardly expect someone like Burton, or anyone making a big budget Disney- distributed project to understand the material. But if you cannot understand the soul of what you are working with, you cannot leverage or extend it. You will need to count on your own talents instead. But Burton's strength is simple: the imposition of disordered fantasy on relatively ordered reality. He has exhausted this and was finished as an artist long ago.

By any measure other than color intensity, this is a failure as a movie. When Depp isn't given a complex structure to support, he can at least be amusing. Here, we have not even that.

What is normally considered nonsense sequences in the books are anything but. Dodgson was the foremost theory of logic in Europe at the time. Based in Oxford, he created the story for the child of the Dean, the creator of the then great Greek lexicon. Dodgson/Carroll was a master of the inadequacies of logic within the medium of everyday language.

All the "nonsense" sections are really a catalog of all the strange ways in which logic breaks when it encounters the way we linguistically form thoughts. Many of these parody assumptions Dean Liddell made in his understanding of Greek, mistakes that have saddled us with flawed scholarship on Aristotle and his logic. They are great, great fun: puzzles that even a 6 year old can laugh about.

This is where playful narrative originates. Only Shakespeare, Joyce and Lennon-NcCartney have had similar influence on our everyday thought. Karl Rove, for example, stands on the shoulders of Charles Dodgson's trickery.

None of this is conveyed. None, even though the Marx brothers made this safe territory for film humor.

Even the overall structure of the Alice stories is cool. Dodgson was not a pedophile, nor a drug addict, but he was something more dangerous to his soul. He was a charter member of Oxford's Psychical Society and a student of the inventor of mystical tarot, the self-named Court de Gebelin. The structure of the Alice stories, based on this, is our first structurally folded literature.

His ordination ruined by his guilt about this, he spent the remainder of his life writing a C S Lewis-like Christian allegory, Sylvie and Bruno to make amends. It was every bit as tepid and worthless as this. Every bit as wrong, as offensive to reality.

The movie also mixes in Jabberwocky. That was a poem written years earlier as a teen, to amuse his crotchety parson father, someone obsessed with the perversion of noble Saxon words by effete French. The poem is about the battle between true (Saxon) language and logical language.

(This comment is on the two-dimensional exhibition. I decided that the effects would be beowulf-like and cheaply distracting. I think I was right.)

Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.

Adding a little bit of a background story and a few more characters to Alice's adventures didn't do as much as i thought it would for the story. Truthfully i wanted to love this movie, I'm a huge Tim Burton/ Johnny Depp fan. But this just didn't do it for me. I came out of the theater wondering if it were just the mediocre script or the director who had failed to meet my expectations. The best part of this movie is probably Johnny Depps portrayal of the mad hatter who truly is mad. However, Mia Wasikowska presents Alice in a dull manner that had me checking my watch every ten or fifteen minutes. Overall this film isn't awful, but at the same time its no masterpiece, for an interesting film to look at I suppose this would be an alright choice, however if you want a great story and compelling acting, you might want to check out something else, because this isn't the movie you're looking for.

Tim Burton film version of Lewis Carroll's classic proves the special slickness of director to create weird worlds and strange characters . Alice (Mia Wasikowska)is 19-year-old and doesn't remember nothing about her former visit on Wonderland happened 10 years ago . Then she returns to the magical world from her childhood adventure, where she reunites with her old friends as Mad Hatter (Jhnny Depp), White Rabbit (voice of Michael Sheen), Chesshie Cat (Stephen Fry), Blue Caterpillar (voice of Alan Rickman) and learns of her true destiny: to end the Red Queen's (Helena Bonham Carter)reign of terror who helped by Knave of Hearts (Crispin Glover) is fighting her sister White Queen (Anne Hathaway)for the kingdom.

Moving rendering of Lewis Carroll classic with gimmick of blending live action and computer generator puppets and 3D animation . Riveting for its casting , but overall , roller-coaster spectacle. Most of the charm and wit remains from original story in this particular version . It results to be an amusing of somewhat aloof , storytelling of children classic with a magnificent three-dimensional visual effects team at its best bring to life the following : the Cheshire cat , Blue caterpillar, the Queen of hearts, March Hare , Tweedledum and many others. Breathtaking array of technical effects with impressive set pieces illuminate the Alice's full-blown adventures. The amazing plot is pure entertainment and with interesting screenplay based on characters created by Lewis Carroll , though here Alice acts as a heroine who combats dragons , monsters and of course the evil Queen of Hearts . Episodic characters as Mad Hatter and Queen of Hearts are given major boost by strong personalities from Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter . Spectacular final battle full of action , groundbreaking frames and fabulous fights . Overwhelming production design , though full of digital effects with impressive scenes and portentous images . Stirring musical score fitting perfectly to story by Danny Elfman and colorful cinematography by Dariusz Wolski . The motion picture lavishly financed by veteran producer Daryl F. Zanuck is originally directed by Tim Burton in his exceptional style. Rating : 6,5 acceptable rendition .

Other take on based on this vintage tale are the following : 1933 by Norman Z McLeod with Gary Cooper , Edward Everett Horton and Jack Oakie ; 1950 by Dallas Bower with Carol Marsh , Pamela Brown and Felix Aylmer ; 1951 by Walt Disney directed by Clyde Geronimi, Hamilton Luke with voices of Sterling Holloway , Ed Wynn and Richard Haydn ; 1972 by William Sterling with Fiona Fullerton, Peter Sellers , Dudley Moore and Michael Crawford and TV version with Tina Majorino and Woopy Goldberg .

Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland is a sequel and not a retelling of the original children's novels by Lewis Carroll. In this film, Alice is now 19-years old, and soon after the death of her father, is proposed to be married away. Feeling pressured, she runs off, following a white rabbit, which leads her to Wonderland, a place she only vaguely remembers from childhood. There, she meets past familiar faces as the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp), the Blue Caterpillar (Alan Rickman), the Cheshire Cat (Stephen Fry), and eventually the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter), who has been terrorizing the land with her harsh rule and beheading of heads. Alice finds out that her destiny is to end the Red Queen's rule by slaying the queen's dragon, Jabberwocky, as written in the prophesy. Along the way she meets up with all sorts of colorful characters.

If you remember, Steven Spielberg's Hook was the live action sequel to Peter Pan. Similarly, Tim Burton's film is very much like a close cousin, except it's about Alice. The progression of the story is also kind of similar, where the main character, Alice, like Peter, must rediscover herself and finally defeat her nemesis. Likewise, both films are both elaborately staged, they are both about growing up and making choices, and there's a big showdown. Chances are if one liked Hook, one will find many things to like about Alice.

Tim Burton's version of the Wonderland's environments are gorgeous, imaginatively created, lots of colorful details, and breathes life. The castles are sleek and intricately designed. The creatures are generally live versions (CG) of the Disney's previous animated version, and they're even more odder and fun to look at. I particularly loved the portrayal of the Chesire Cat in this film, and the way he snakes through midair like water feels very natural, although it wouldn't feel so natural in real life. Only complaint I may have in terms of visuals would probably be where we see CG versions of natural creatures like dogs--they're not particularly stylized so their CG-ness can be more noticeable.

Danny Elfman's score fits the environment just right, giving added intensity when needed. This film is essentially Tim Burton's playground and even if there wasn't any story, it still would be plenty of fun to just watch the loony characters in their environment. I will add that 3-D aspect of it helped a lot.

Johnny Depp plays the Mad Hatter with usual gusto, as he brings much energy and quirkiness to such an oddball character. I suppose there is a mix of Willy Wonka and Jack Sparrow in there somewhere. Given that other characters are mostly or completely CG, Johnny Depp's character can feel a bit of out of place, as he still feels human. Helena Bonham Carter as the big-headed (literally) Red Queen is fun, expressive, and extremely likable for such a short-tempered character. Mia Wasikowska is particularly noteworthy as Alice, which she plays with free-spirited pluckiness, charm, and beauty.

The story, admittedly, is a simple one, although it is to the story's credit that Alice is now an adult--it helps since many happenings in Wonderland can be quite unfriendly, bizarre, and grotesque. Thankfully, no more worries about some dream causing some lifelong trauma to some poor child. I also appreciated the fact that her Wonderland, like dreams, is an extension of her frustrations with the "real" world, where she felt she had many "expectations" from outside forces. At the same time, it's not like Where the Wild Things Are, where other characters are actually projections of real-life people from the main character's life. For example, to read Mad Hatter as an extension of her father feels a bit like a stretch, although the Red Queen could possibly represent her future mother-in-law since they both dislike animals. Certainly, one can merely enjoy it at face value and the creativity of this world and be fine with it.

Overall, I enjoyed this world of Alice. In one sense, that may be the important thing, if one were to stick to the flavor of the original novel. The story within the Wonderland, I felt, wasn't as poignant as "real life" moments, which were filmed with much love and detail. Given the fact that original story consisted of series of random events and character interactions, it was nice to see the characters work together a bit. The overall result isn't something beyond what one would expect from this style of work, but it's fun, and where it succeeds, it succeeds well, thanks to the consistency of Tim Burton's imaginative visuals. *** out of **** stars.

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