Director Tim Burton, well-known for his dark style of filmmaking (“Sweeney Todd,” “Edward Scissorhands,” and “Batman” to name a few), returns with his take on Lewis Carroll’s classic story, “Alice in Wonderland.” You’ll find many of the elements, characters, and events here from the original Disney version, but knowing Burton’s work, it’s not going to be as simple as all that. He takes this story, which has been adapted multiple times, and adds his own touch to it.
As the film opens, we meet Charles Kingsleigh (Marton Csokas) and his business partners as he is trying to start a new venture. Charles’s six-year-old daughter, Alice (Mairi Ella Challen), tells him that she’s been having the same dream of falling down a hole and meeting some very strange creatures. Years later, Alice’s (Mia Wasikowska) father has passed away. She and her mother attend a party at which Hamish (Leo Bill), the son of one of Charles’s former business partners, proposes to Alice. Strangely though, right before this happens, Alice starts seeing a white rabbit (voice of Michael Sheen), and when she doesn’t have an answer for Hamish, she decides to follow the rabbit.
This leads her to a rabbit hole, and after she falls in, her adventure begins. She meets up with those same strange characters from her dreams including The Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp), The March Hare (voice of Paul Whitehouse), and The Dormouse (voice of Barbara Windsor). It turns out that it just might be her destiny to bring the reign of the evil Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter) to an end.
With Burton’s tendency towards strange and fantastical filmmaking, Lewis Carroll’s story turns out to be the perfect fit for him. It has the kind of bizarre characters and moody atmosphere that you would come to expect from most of his other projects. His own little spin to it includes a re-imagining of all the characters, though most are not too far off track of what you’d expect them to be according to the story. This story was dark in the first place, but the filmmakers are somehow able to make it even darker by adding some strange beasts and even a climactic battle sequence.
The film is presented in 3-D, and like Cameron’s “Avatar,” it’s not an “in your face” kind of 3-D where the filmmakers use it to poke things towards the audience, but instead use it to create the world the film takes place in in order to immerse the audience in the story. It makes Wonderland, or “Underland” as they call it in this film, come alive.
The interesting thing was that the 3-D wasn’t the only thing to remind me of “Avatar.” I was also reminded of it because the film seemed to be mostly about the look with the story being somewhat of an afterthought, though it should be noted that this story is far more original and interesting than the one “Avatar” presents. The story here is certainly interesting enough to sustain the film, but it felt like they were rushing through it in the first half hour or so by cramming in most of the events (Big Alice, Little Alice, The Tea Party, etc.) and characters from the White Rabbit to the Blue Caterpillar (Voice of Alan Rickman). Then around the halfway mark, it felt like the story stalled until it was time for the epic battle sequence between the forces of the Red Queen and the White Queen (Anne Hathaway).
That being said, the story is punctuated with some spectacular special effects, including the growing and shrinking Alice, as well as a fantastic production design from Robert Stromberg. The film actually presents a fascinating combination of live-action, animation, and the special effects that look seamlessly put together. This all comes together to help make the world of Underland appear more plausible than it initially sounds.
The stand-out performance of the group comes from Mia Wasikowska as Alice. She only started professionally acting in 2004 and is relatively unknown but is able to bring just the right touches to the character of Alice. Johnny Depp creates another memorable character in a long line of memorable characters, most of them under Tim Burton’s direction. This marks the seventh time the pair have worked together, and almost every time they do, magic happens, with the one exception being a remake of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” that didn’t turn out too well.
This latest rendition of “Alice in Wonderland” is a journey worth taking mainly to see Tim Burton’s imagination at play. The story is so well-known, but you haven’t seen it done quite in this way before. For those of you who are only familiar with the original Disney animated version, you’ll be surprised to see just how much deeper the rabbit hole goes.
3/4 stars.
You can read this and other movie reviews in my column at The Richmond Examiner.