No Wonder

Alice In Wonderland (the movie) is having a huge opening weekend. It's exceeded its already high expectations. I guess the combination of Tim Burton, colorful ads, a classic title, lack of competition and, above all, Johnny Depp, added up to a monster hit.

Still, I don't think the film delivers and I doubt it will have legs. There are a lot of things wrong with it, but worst is you keep thinking this film is something delightful, like the Alice books, but it really has nothing to do with them.

There aren't many works as close to my heart as Alice In Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass. Unfortunately, the movie exploits this love and trashes it.

Burton might have been the right director to capture the surreal yet hyper-logical world of Alice, but I guess that didn't interest him. Perhaps he felt the world didn't need yet another adaptation of the original. Maybe it doesn't (and maybe it can't be done--I haven't seen a satisfactory version yet). Perhaps the only reason he signed onto the project--and Burton is successful enough that he can pick and choose--is he liked the premise: Alice is a young woman unsure of her place in society, and she works out her problems by returning to Wonderland. And to allow myself one more "perhaps," perhaps this concept could have worked, though it would have required a much better screenplay.

Instead, we get a mix of Return To Oz, Twilight and Chronicles Of Narnia. Wonderland was always a bit spooky, but in Burton's version, it's filled with death--and still manages to be dreary. We see all the characters we know and love, but they're recruited to be cogs in a tale of female empowerment, instead of delightfully mad figures on their own. Only Helena Bonham Carter's big-headed Red Queen manages to be a little fun, when she's not busy trying to murder everyone.

The story starts with a tendentious Victorian prologue, where 19-year-old Alice, with very few prospects, looks like she'll be trapped in a loveless marriage to doltish Lord Hamish. Soon enough, she's down the rabbit hole, back in Wonderland. Turns out she's been summoned. Everyone wants to know if this is the same Alice who came as a child--it's been prophesied she will slay the Jabberwock, which the Red Queen is using to oppress the land. My heart sank. Alice isn't Joan of Arc. We're stuck in a plot, which the rest of the movie will play out, that leads to Alice facing the monster, and saving the world. It's symbolic of her learning to stand up for herself, so when she returns above ground she'll do the same thing every ingenue has done in every romance since movies started (and then some).

In the books, Alice meets these bizarre characters and what ensues are funny, clever exchanges, along with much delightful buffoonery and some excellent poetry. That's pretty much out the window here, as the whole kingdom quakes in the Red Queen's police state, while her good sister, the White Queen, hopes to enlist Alice as a champion. They're all too busy planning for war to do anything funny, much less recite poetry. Look at the Mad Hatter, perhaps Lewis Carroll's most famous creation. Here he's not so much into crazy tea parties as he's a Scottish revolutionary patriot spy. Who needs this?