Burton's Wonderland Feels Sleepy and Hollow

Alice in Wonderland

** out of ****

Directed by: Tim Burton

Starring: Mia Wasikowska, Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Anne Hathaway and Crispin Glover

Running time: 109 minutes

It looked like a dream on paper: zany fantasy director Tim Burton reuniting with frequent collaborator Johnny Depp for an extension of Lewis Carroll’s psychedelic classics – and for Disney, where the filmmaker first made his mark.

Alice in Wonderland seems like a perfect brew for Burton and Co., yet it is only a shrug-worthy effort, an adaptation that feels more manufactured than invigorated.

Australian actress Mia Wasikowska (from HBO’s In Treatment) portrays the title character.

As a young girl, Alice visited Underland (its real name), but years later believes the place is only a strange fantastical world from within her dreams.

Now 19, and an independent woman in Victorian-era England, she’s set up to marry the son (Leo Bill) of her late father’s affluent business partner. But Alice dodges the marriage proposal and rushes off to chase a White Rabbit (voiced by Michael Sheen) down that pesky hole.

Between her two visits, Underland has changed. The haughty Red Queen, Iracebeth (Helena Bonham Carter), has conquered the throne, usurping power from her sister Mirana, the White Queen (Anne Hathaway).

It is written in scripture that the Frabjous Day is upon all creatures of Underland. As our precocious protagonist soon discovers, she is destined to slay the Jabberwocky, a frightening fire-breathing concoction that belongs to the Red Queen (and inspired by a Carroll poem), on that pivotal day.

But before she can slay the dragon, she must ally herself with a flurry of oddball companions, from the gleefully aloof Mad Hatter (who else but Johnny Depp) to the kooky Cheshire Cat (voiced by Stephen Fry) to the chain-smoking caterpillar, Absolem (the growl of Alan Rickman).

Burton attempts to flesh the universe within a cohesive narrative – far from the episodic wanderings of Carroll’s original source. He ensured that screenwriter Linda Woolverton (The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast) would pen the film with a story that lies within the archetype of good-triumphs-evil fantasy fanfare.

But that’s exactly where the problem lies: this Wonderland is too ordinary. Gone is the offbeat joy of the original material. What remains is a leaden story-line too uniform with other CGI-heavy adaptations, from Harry Potter to Narnia to The Golden Compass.

The slight characterization doesn’t help matters. Alice is not remotely curious and lacks the spirit we’ve accustomed to the character. She barely cracks a smile – when did Alice turn from Dorothy Gales into Bella Swan?

This should be Wasikowska’s picture, but her character wanders around Underland with grave disappointment for much of the duration. The young actress, as well as Hathaway’s White Queen, get personalities as lifeless as the doll versions of their characters young girls will undoubtedly receive in their Happy Meals.

Instead, much of the attention is focused on Depp and Bonham Carter, who can’t seem to get enough of their Tim Burton fix (rightfully so for the latter, being his wife).

Buried under buckets of white makeup, both actors have an unabashed, eccentric presence. Depp is great fun (Burton even sneaks in a sly Edward Scissorhands reference during a pivotal scene), and Bonham Carter even more so as the deliciously rotten and poofy-headed Red Queen.

Also at the top of their game are the makeup artists and production designers (headed by Robert Stromberg, a newly minted Oscar winner for Avatar), aptly so considering the fantasia of these kooky characters and the grandeur of Carroll’s universe.

The sets are rich with detail and the surroundings are equally magnificent, even if their pizzazz has a hazy, Blue Period, feel.

Still, there’s a struggle, predictably, between live-action and CGI. The computer-generated effects are fancifully executed, but they don’t mesh with the rest of the picture. This becomes increasingly noticeable when the characters (especially Alice) interact with entirely superficial creatures.

The 3D isn’t very immersive either. Nice for Disney to take advantage of our wallets, though. Perhaps they were weary of bad word-of-mouth from families, as the film contains its fair share of decapitations, gouged-out eyeballs and Hookah-smoking caterpillars.

This Wonderland may be pretty, but it’s hardly engrossing. By making critical story mistakes, and extracting a bland leading performance from Wasikowska, Burton and his crew have obviously not remembered what the Dormouse said.