Alice in Wonderland

(2010)

Dir: Tim Burton

I’ve seen video game films before, but this film felt more like one than any of them.

For a man lauded for his creativity, Burton does tend to do a lot of adaptations. Oh sorry, Tim, I meant re-imaginings. It worked with his Batman films in the early 90s, but his recent efforts have been laughable. Alice in Wonderland features the same annoying sprog of Lewis Carroll’s imagination, this time as an equally irritating teenager, returning to what has become ‘Underland’, where she must slay the Jabberwocky to end the Red Queen’s reign of terror.

Though I’ve never been the biggest fan of Carroll’s original and extremely overrated tale, it does posses a certain magical charm. Burton’s vision does not. It resembles The Chronicle of Narnia but with even more bloody CGI. I dread to think what it must have looked like in 3D.

Despite Helen Bonham Carter, Anne Hathaway and the always watchable Crispin Glover’s best efforts to bring some entertainment to this drudging flick as the Red Queen, White Queen and Knave of Hearts respectively, they are fighting an impossible battle. Gone is the charm of Carroll or even Disney, replaced by the annoying shenanigans of Depp as the Mad Hatter and the charisma vacuum of Mia Wasikowska as Alice. They drain the film of vibrancy. This is another ‘crazy’ Johnny Depp performance to add to an ever-growing and already redundant pile.

Tim Burton is an acquired taste. His Gothic obsession and man-crush on Depp makes him the hero of many an Emo or Goth (that’s what they’re called now, right?). Unfortunately he hasn’t made a good film since 1999’s Sleepy Hollow, and Alice in Wonderland joins the likes of Planet of the Apes, Big Fish, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as another enormous misfire.

** / *****

“Worse and worser.”