Mark Trammell
I’m pretty much a sucker for 3-D, but I always wondered why no one truly talented tackled the approach. Yes, I know Hitchcock did one back in the day- “Dial ‘M’ for Murder”- but that was a tad before my time. What I got growing up was cut rate ‘B’ movies, typically of the horror variety, plus a few moldy-oldies on TV like the Elvira-staples “The Mask” and the original “House of Wax.” Being a kid, I, of course, I ate it up with a spoon. Eventually, though, I remember thinking: why isn’t Spielberg doing one of these things?
Well, technology has vastly improved since then, and last year brought us just such an example, James Cameron’s epic “Avatar,” which, by the time you read this, might well have walked off with a whole slew of Oscars. As much as I’ve enjoyed some of Cameron’s older work, though, I was far more excited to hear that someone much more in my wheelhouse, Tim Burton, was taking on 3D for the first time, his post-makeover edition of “Nightmare Before Christmas” (which he didn’t direct, only produced) notwithstanding. Further, it was to adapt one of my all-time favorite novels, Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland.”
Sure, I was a bit miffed that it knocked a potentially more interesting adaptation out of the running of the videogame “Alice” by American McGee, featuring erstwhile “Buffy” star Sarah Michelle Gellar as an adult version of the timeless character. And granted, the novel has been adapted countless times, even as recent as last year’s “Alice” mini-series on the Syfy network. Hell, there was even a version filmed here in Birmingham a few years back. Still, this is Burton we’re talking about, one of my all-time favorite directors by far, and the man behind movies as excellent as the two Eds: “Scissorhands” and “Wood.”
Then again, he also did the god-awful “Planet of the Apes” and the somewhat pointless “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.” Which Burton would I get?
Well, it’s not as subpar as those last two films, but it’s no “Beetlejuice,” either. Hell, it’s not even “Pee Wee’s Big Adventure” good, but it’ll do. Burton may be going through the motions somewhat here, maybe to sponge enough dollars off the Man, aka Disney- who, after all, gave him his first big break- to do that uber-bizzarre pet project he’s always wanted to do.
Burton changes just enough here, even drawing elements from the poem “Jabberwocky,” also by Carroll, to keep things interesting- but not much else. Alice is now 19, on the cusp of womanhood, and about to be subjected to an arranged marriage- if she caves in to peer pressure, that is. Never mind that families back then were marrying off their children much earlier than nineteen years old. Child brides are a bit too creepy for Disney’s taste, no doubt.
If you roll with Burton’s line of thinking, though, what he’s done- or at least screenwriter Linda Woolverton (“The Lion King”) has- is to make this “Alice” an extended metaphor for a girl who’s “not a girl, not yet a woman,” to quote that great sage of our times, Britney.
This Alice is given to flights of fancy, distraction and elaborate dreams, but is also adult enough to recognize she’s being manipulated into marching to the beat of the same old drummer as everyone else in her community. Opting instead to run off, she bails on her intended suitor and flits off to Wonderland, as she once did years ago as a child.
Burton’s most clever concept is that this Wonderland is slightly even more off than the one in the book, in Burton’s inimitable way. It’s darker, danker, and scarier, with death or possible dismemberment at every turn. In Burton’s “Alice,” eyes are gouged out, and, yes, heads do roll. In one particularly disturbing sequence, Alice uses decapitated human heads as stepping stones on a moat. I must have missed that part in the original novels!
Still, part of me wishes he’d pushed things even farther as, say his stop-motion classics “The Corpse Bride” and the aforementioned “Nightmare.” As it stands, such sequences as the inspired one with the heads are far and few in between. It’s a kick to see the always-interesting Crispin Glover (“Willard”) on the big screen again as the villainous Stayne, and dig that crazy head and tiny body on Burton’s real-life (and astutely-chosen) wife, Helena Bonham Carter, as the decapitation-obsessed Red Queen.
The film also wisely adapts the less-is-more approach of Cameron, with its more subtle 3D effects which seek to transport you into another world, not toss things in your direction for two hours. Perhaps the most impressive effect is the Cheshire Cat, who regularly beams in and out of the picture, with excellent voice-work by character actor Stephen Fry (TV’s “Bones”).
That said, though, this is standard issue Burton, and that goes double for Depp. He’s been to the crazy character well so often, the most radical thing he could do at this point would be to play someone normal- his turn in the lackluster “Public Enemies” notwithstanding. One can’t escape the whiff of a certain staleness here, and that’s not even the fault of the overtly-familiar material.
There was an interesting film to be made from this particular approach, but this just isn’t it, I’m afraid. It’s worth seeing for die-hard Burton, Depp, and Carroll fans, but don’t be surprised if you’re a bit disappointed. As for the rest of the world, we’ll just have to see how it goes. If anything, maybe Burton will get the payola he needs to do something really interesting besides yet another adaptation of something that didn’t really need it in the first place.
Listening, Hollywood?
