Review: 'Alice In Wonderland' Light On Lunacy

(out of four)

The palette is gray, trees are scraggly and everything is over the top. The quirky vision already inherent in "Alice in Wonderland" gets kicked up a notch when it becomes Alice in Tim Burtonland.

The mixture is gleefully fun and madder than a hatter, yet the classic adventure of Alice is somehow missing. Mixing two Lewis Carroll books to create a linear story, "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," and "Through The Looking Glass," screenwriter Linda Woolverton and Burton turn "Alice in Wonderland" into an epic battle between good and evil. Like the movie adaptation of "Where the Wild Things Are" and the latest blockbuster "Avatar," the story relies on the entrance of a human from an Earthly land to help save the inhabitants of another world, and in this case from each other.

For this telling of "Alice," a 19-year-old Victorian girl (played by 21-year-old Mia Wasikowska) is controlled by her widowed mother. In an effort for them both to be taken care of, mumsy has promised Alice to a wealthy family's nervous son, Hamish. She'll have to take care of his digestion problems, the boy's mother tells her just before Hamish is to propose to Alice at a well-attended garden party.

But Alice is distracted and having hallucinations from a recurring dream. She sees a white rabbit with a pocket watch and she must follow him. This, thankfully, is where the real storybook we know and love comes in. She drops down the rabbit hole, finds a key, drinks a bottle labeled "Drink Me," gets shorter, eats a piece of cake that says "Eat Me," grows taller, and eventually finds her way through the door that leads to Underland.

Then that pesky theme enters the room again. Everyone who meets Alice wants to discuss the legendary "vorpal sword" and her destiny to slay the Jabberwocky, the Red Queen’s huge dragon. It's all so Harry Potter-esque, especially when Alan Rickman's voice booms out of our favorite storybook spiritual guru, the Blue Caterpillar, on a large leaf smoking a hookah.

The liveliest parts of Burton's "Alice in Wonderland" have nothing to do with the vorpal sword, but with Alice's interactions with the various personalities that make the wonderful world of Underland go 'round. The CG animation is at its best with the at-odds twins Tweedledee and Tweedledum (both played by Matt Lucas), and the incredibly large-headed Red Queen (played to the hilt by Helena Bonham Carter wearing a three-pound red wig). Non-animated characters such as Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter and Anne Hathaway as the White Queen are the least engaging.

Depp's Mad Hatter is more of a sad sack then a lunatic, and moviegoers will either love his portrayal or pray that he stops speaking in the same sissy voice he affected for his Willy Wonka character (I'm in the latter camp). Hathaway appears to have studied reel after reel of Glinda the Good Witch, although she actually looks more like Lady Gaga in this role.

There's not much nonsensical in this "Alice in Wonderland," save for the silly tea party scene where a rabbit and a mouse hurl insults and tea cups at each other.

If Jefferson Airplane had to come up with "White Rabbit" based on this story, we might not have ever had the classic rock song. Alice's hallucinations are played down and there isn't a double entendre to be found each time the Blue Caterpillar blows a puff of smoke Alice's way or a Cheshire Cat magically appears and disappears.

While its CG animation and 3-D spectacle is sure to delight, the film would have been just as satisfying if Burton and company stuck close to the storybook. Go ask Alice what happened to Lewis Carroll's classic, hallucinatory tale.