Be honest. When you found out that Johnny Depp was going to play the Mad Hatter, regardless of whether or not you’re a fantasy fan or not, you had two dominant strains of thought swish through your brain. One: “OF COURSE! WHY DIDN’T I THINK OF IT BEFORE?!” And TWO: “Well that figures (cue eye roll)”. All cynicism aside though, Depp, for all his eccentricities and oddness, remains modestly committed to his role and weaves the tea-sipping loon with a characteristic flair that is hard to hate. Unfortunately the same can’t really be said about Burton’s involvement.
I’ll be up front with you rabid idolaters out there: this is not a re-imagination of Clyde Geronimi’s classic 1951 acid trip. Nor is it a faithful recount of Alice’s ADVENTURES in Wonderland or its sequel “Through the Looking Glass” by Charles Dodgson (that’s right, “Lewis Carroll” was a pseudonym!). What we have here is something entirely original yet wholly disparate in terms of mood or atmosphere.
I won’t pretend to double-talk you into believing that Burton hasn’t done any good films in the past as a kind of requisite to account for my displeasure with him either. Whether it’s been Stooge-esque invaders from the Red Planet or Paul Reubens as a man-child, his films have always had a readily identifiable stamp of the morbidly humorous or the humorously morbid that you either love or don’t. That said, I can honestly say that I wasn’t feeling it this time around. It’s all quirk and no vision, a dangerously vapid combination which leaves us sighing rather than cheering. The story begins with Alice Kingsley all-grown-up. 19 years old to be precise. With the recent death of her father standing watch and a wedding to a smug fire-haired boy named Hamish Ascot (hmmmm…) pending, Alice—suffering the pressures of her earthly responsibilities—predictably chases that reliable ol white rabbit back down the hole again. Adventures ensue, et cetera, bandersnatch, callooh callay!
All the psychedelics seem to have been abandoned and ironically, in lieu of acts of absurdity that would only seem befitting, we get another bug-eyed fairy tale that feels like an attempted rehash of Spielberg’s “Hook” premise. Similarly strange is how the plot seems to stick so rigidly to the conventions, especially unusual if you consider the groundwork that Burton has laid for himself here. Whether or not he’s trying to tone down his gruesome persona, the fact that the story gets sentimental way too often for its own good ensures that the dark depths which had previously raised the stakes so much higher in his movies of a less substantial…budgetary character (about $200 million this time around), means that what very well could have been a terrifically brave coming-of-age tale becomes...well....just another coming-of-age tale, only much "safer, with elements of the recent Narnia and LOTR crazes to spruce things up to the brim of copyright infringement.
Short of a visually-arresting scene in which Alice leap-frogs along the severed heads of the Red Queen’s victims, like lily-pads in a moat, there isn’t all that much to admire. But maybe that’s because we don’t have the time to. No question, it’s slick, sleek and brand-spanking new but there seems to be a murderous lack of mythology to the whole rushed affair; at least to the point where die-hard Carroll fans would be able to slow down and revel in the blissfully nonsensicalness of it all. If you’ve seen one CG talking flower then you’ve seen em all. And it’s almost as though Linda Woolverton (“Mulan” & “The Lion King”) simply lifted key ideas and phrases from Carroll’s expansive and loopy lexicon and just filled in the blanks with social rebellion clichés, picking out the smallest elements from the novels and mashing everything together in a last-ditch attempt at foible-fueled flight.
Again, Depp seems to be the saving grace, coming complete with a lovably crunchy recitation of Carroll’s infamous Jabberwocky verse in a throaty Glaswegian growl. Meanwhile everyone just tries to look befuddled in order to keep up with the rushed story-telling, pouting their lips crazily, wiggling their noses, puffing their chests or otherwise trying to make silly Americans laugh with their funny accents. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to discover if Burton had Crispin Glover listed as “auto-creep” on speed-dial. And if you’ve seen Helena Bonham-Carter as the egotistical fem-dom mistress with a touch of punk and a dash of nutso then you’ve seen her before. The only other worthwhile appearance is from Alan Rickman; and the fact that he didn’t even agree to have his glowering visage anthropomorphized onto the blue caterpillar’s body robs us even that small bit of charm.
In fewer words, it feels like the same old trick. It's like watching a VHS recording of Siegfried and Roy on a 10-inch Panasonic. There’s that same Burton magic with none of the wonderment attached. Least of all the kind that leaves us with the frumiously frabjous snicker-snack of crowd-pleasing satisfaction.
(Best if:) You never get tired of that stupefied look Mr. Depp seems to have perfected to an art unto itself. (OR:) You have a fetish for Victorian heroines (their funny accents included).
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