The wrong Alice indeed
March 8, 2010
Curiouser and curiouser, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland seems to curiously lose its wonderfully bizarre charm in its new movie adaptation by Tim Burton. It is understood that Burton didn’t get any emotional connection with the original story of Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland by Lewis Caroll and as well somehow disliked by the previous 1951 movie adaptation, Alice in Wonderland by Disney, therefore he created a new framework in his own version of Alice in Wonderland to give the old story a whole new spin. The premise was no doubt very promising, with all its gleaming star casts starting with Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Anne Hathaway and Mia Wasikowska. However it is turned out to be just another mediocre action-like movie with flowery visual frills that leaves no impression or whatsoever.
First of all, I admit, I never really liked the story of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Caroll. I feel that the story is very much random without any structure and adorned too much with nonsense. I want to love all the wackiness and trippy events in the story but all of them prove to be too much for me. I tried very much to like it though, but no luck, it just doesn’t click. Therefore I was very excited with what Burton had planned for the movie, as the new Alice in Wonderland movie might be my reason to finally love Alice in Wonderland.
It started all right with an older and much mature Alice downs the rabbit hole once again. It might not be as a cute start as I expected, but it is acceptable as it might just be a revolutionary start to a story that I don’t really cherish. Then the prospect started to get all hazy when the Mad-Hatter appeared. As much as I admire Johnny Depp, I was disappointed with his performance in this one. Watching the Hatter was like watching Willy Wonka in a clown frock. Then it all went downhill from there. Burton’s feverish imagination has truly transformed Wonderland into some kind of a Nightmareland. The Underland portrayed is devoid of wackiness, whimsy and wonder, it seems like the place has just recently dropped with atomic bombs with a radiation powerful enough to create peculiar critters like Jabberwocky, the March Hare and Blue Caterpillar. Then as if it is not enough to crack the story, a ‘legendary’ sword stepped in and out of nowhere it turned out to be some kind of ‘Alice and the Lord of The Rings in Nightmareland’, Alice mutated from a supposedly adorable little girl into Joan of Arc, the Jabberwocky slayer. Actions barged in, wittiness retreated and before you know it, the story had completely lost its catch.
Heavily bombarded with visual candies in 3D, the movie still failed to impress. It’s like riding an empty ride in visual-candy land. The actions displayed were trite and not completely suitable with all the slashing and crowding, which finally wrapped in an anticlimax of Alice beheading the Jabberwocky plus a bonus scene of the Mad-Hatter doing some kind of out-of-place achingly body-twisting break-dance.
Lastly, my opinion here isn’t revolving around my tepid interest of the original Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland, but of my opinion of the movie as a movie. I am not even compelled to compare the movie with the original story because I couldn’t care less with it (the story). I just think about the prospects of all the fascinating elements inside the story that out of its wackiness could be weaved into such a wonderful motion picture. Well, what’s done is done, probably the future Alice in Wonderland movie will be better, at least good enough for me to make the movie as a reason to love Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
