Review: Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland IMAX 3D

Sunday, 28 February 2010 15:09 | by Martin Anderson

Genre-splicing hobbles a potential Tim Burton goth classic...

Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland (IMAX 3D REVIEW PICTURE)

There's a lot of classic fare, lovingly re-imagined, to enjoy in Tim Burton's pleasurably warped vision of Lewis Carroll's dreamscape...before it turns into what seems to be a cross between Return Of The King, Pirates Of The Caribbean 3 and any cinematic Harry Potter outing.

What most delights in Alice In Wonderland is the scenery, where production designer Robert Stromberg has clearly stuck to the spirit (and often the letter) of the Burton back-catalogue. With such a distinguished history of celluloid gothic fantasy under his belt, the director has a great deal of passion and vision to offer, with ruined windmills, fields of elephantine mushrooms, talking flowers, heart-themed castles and mysterious forests.

"Burton's Wonderland is a world as evocative and brilliantly realised as Pandora in Avatar"

We've seen many of Wonderland's more sinister winter landscapes before in Nightmare Before Christmas, Ed Wood, and practically every other film Burton could shoehorn them into, and they're no less welcome this time round. The truncated tree trunk down which Alice (Mia Wasikowska) falls seems to be what's left of the 'tree of death' in Sleepy Hollow. And all this is just fine with me. Burton's Wonderland is a world as evocative and brilliantly realised as Pandora in Avatar, and with a certain heritage that lifts it above any of the criticism that Cameron's environment was subject to.

Equally delightful are the renditions of the classic characters from the original tale. Facing stiff competition from a long history of endearingly wiley Cheshire Cats, Burton trumps the lot of them with his CGI take on the character, whose velvet-lined adorability is suitably voiced by the languid Stephen Fry. Matt Lucas gets doubled both in size and number to CGI-perform the very recognisable Tweedledum and Tweedledee, a comic creation of some genius in terms of casting, performance and execution.

Over at the court of the Red Queen, Burton regular (and the missus) Helena Bonham Carter yet again proves that she's no nepotistic passenger, providing the best 'spoilt monarch' since Miranda Richardson bedevilled Rowan Atkinson in the BBC's Blackadder II. The astonishing effect of her enlarged head on a regular body is among the most seamless work of its kind since The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button. Michael Sheen and Barbara Windsor also acquit themselves admirably in the roles, respectively, of the sadly underused White Rabbit and the Dormouse.

And yet I cannot proceed to Johnny Depp's Mad Hatter without throwing a darker shadow over the review, because some of the problems with his character (there are none, as ever, with Depp's performance) are linked into what's wrong with Alice In Wonderland...

"Half-way through the film turns into a focus-grouped gestalt script that has had every children's blockbuster of the last decade thrown into it"

About half-way through, the film pretty much ceases to be the glorious and irreverent Tim Burton movie it starts out as, and turns into what appears to be a focus-grouped gestalt script that has had every children's blockbuster of the last decade thrown into it.

It's no problem, and no surprise either, that Burton would want to revisit the Lewis Carroll landscape some years after the events of the original story, and in a rather darker period of its history. 1985's Return To Oz did as much, and was an enjoyable second-take on an old favourite.

But the problem with granting oneself that liberty is the challenge of not abusing it, and here screenwriter Linda Woolverton fails Carroll, us, Burton...but not the doubtless phalanx of producers and distributors who wanted to channel Potter, Pirates, Rings and all the others. It's not until you see grown-up Alice actually armoured up and about to fight a Jabberwocky (a dragon, voiced by LotR stalwart Christopher Lee) that you can truly feel the shark that Alice In Wonderland has jumped over.

Before this event (the revelation of which is no spoiler, as it's heralded from reel 1), there's a great deal more Tolkienesque business with the Galadriel-like White Queen (Anne Hathaway), and some very cute bloodhounds that constantly seem to be running messages between kingdoms and various split groups who are in various kinds of trouble, imprisonment or peril. You half-expect the dogs to pass Frodo and pals on these apparently endless missions.

"For God's sake, there's even a magic sword to kill the dragon, and guess who the chosen one is?"

And for God's sake, there's even a magic sword to kill the dragon, and guess who the chosen one is?

And here Depp has his conundrum, since his initially delightful turn as the impressively large-eyed Mad Hatter must thereafter run a gamut of moods, accents and (even within the bounds of the character) complete changes of personality and motivation in order to segue us from Wonderland to Potter-land. He's seen Geoffrey Rush go through all this before with the lucrative but rubbish Pirates sequels, so presumably he's learnt by observation to just bank the cheque and do the gig whether it makes sense or not. And in that much, he's more thrown away with his myriad moods than he would have been sticking to the spirit of the original Mad Hatter as written by Carroll.

This is an expensive movie which needs to ensure generic, proven and most of all lucrative product, based on recently successful blockbusters. Much in the style of the 007 directors, Burton is allowed his bit of fun before 'paying the bills'. If it weren't for that initial blast of charm and welcome familiarity (both of the Burton style and the excellent depiction of the characters), Alice In Wonderland would be in the 'Rent it later' category, for all its aesthetic marvels and 3D gimmickry. By the time the charm runs out (about an hour in), my arse was beginning to ache, frankly.

I saw the film at the BFI IMAX in London's Waterloo area today, and it's still one of the best cinematic experiences possible, with a truly astronomical screen and a practically-vertical auditorium that guarantees an unobstructed view from any seat in the house (though it should be remembered that optimum seats for 3D movies are to the rear and in the middle).

The 3D work in Alice In Wonderland is very well-executed. Burton isn't quite as shy as James Cameron was with Avatar about having the odd item 'jump out' of the screen at you, but then the fantastical nature of the material makes it easier to be playful in this way.

Oddly, the most effective 3D shot in the entire film takes place in the pre-'Wonderland' section of the film set in Victorian high society: a look down a crowd of Victorian toffs patiently standing and waiting for Alice to accept a marriage proposal. This gradual diminution of the 3D effect is far more eye-boggling here than with the Cameron approach of throwing the background out of focus (which Burton does a lot too here, it must be admitted). Instead of a 'two-plane' effect, we get a genuine sense of recession in three dimensions. But it's still early days for major 3D releases, so perhaps the various directors taking on such projects will gradually learn these tricks from each other.

"The Cheshire cat is worth the price of admission by itself"

I don't know what to say as to whether you should see this film or not. The first half is vintage Burton, but the second half seems to have been grown in a lab by robot scientists hard-wired to BoxOfficeMojo.com.

Ah hell, the Cheshire cat is worth the price of admission by itself. It's just a bit of a shame that all the best things in Alice In Wonderland are from the original story, when there was so much scope - most particularly with this director at the helm - to add new eccentricities and delights.

Alice In Wonderland opens at the BFI IMAX in Waterloo, London, on March 5th.

3 out of 5 stars