Video may have indeed killed the radio star, and digital downloads are doing the same to video stores, but I wonder if all of this ever-advancing technology is killing kids' imagination. After all, back in the good old days, children were forced to use just that to entertain themselves and each other. Sure, there were "supplements" such as fantasy novels, comic books, radio serials and both films and TV shows. Yet, since those couldn't create perfect and/or seamless realities, kids had to fill in the blanks.
While there are anomalies in today's world such as the "Harry Potter" books that got kids reading fiction again (outside the classroom and before the movie adaptations), most children are spoon fed the creative stuff, be that from amazing advances in movie special effects, video games and other forms of digital media.
Accordingly, I'd wager that many more will likely experience Charles Lutwidge Dodgson's tale of a young girl and her fantastical experiences in the latest big budget blockbuster form than in the nearly century and a half years old source novels on which that's based. Yes, I'm referring to the latest film version of "Alice in Wonderland" (this time in the increasingly ubiquitous eye-popping 3D format) that culls characters and plot elements from both "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and its sequel "Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There."
Despite being published in 1865 and 1872 respectively, those works -- published under the more familiar pseudonym Lewis Carroll -- have mesmerized children (and adults) ever since, and have inspired countless adaptations such as numerous movies (ranging from the famous 1951 Disney animated classic to a porn version from the '70s), TV shows, comic books, live stage shows and even one of the most famous/infamous drug songs ever recorded, Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit" (with lyrics such as "Go ask Alice, when she's 10-feet tall").
The "problem," of course, with the source material is that it has always been too far "out there" in terms of creating a credible live-action version, what with the anthropomorphized animals, plants, playing cards, chess pieces and so on. For better or worse, technology has finally caught up with Carroll's tale. Yet, even with that, one would still obviously need a cinematic visionary to bring all of that to the big screen in an equally imaginative fashion.
In that regard, director Tim Burton would certainly seem to fit the bill. While he's had some misfires (his remake of "Planet of the Apes" and his second and decidedly ugly outing with the Caped Crusader, "Batman Returns"), he clearly has a flair for telling odd tales (such as "Beetle Juice" and "Edward Scissorhands") and is no stranger to filming classic stories ("Sleepy Hollow" and "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory"), even if they've also been hit and miss affairs.
He certainly seems like a perfect fit for the material, but like any cinematic storyteller, he's taken certain artistic liberties with the source material. Okay, to be accurate, he's taken a lot of them, and reconfigured a great deal of the original tales, thrown in new plot elements, and turned the story into a more straightforward and streamlined offering that only partially resembles the original material.
To be fair, Burton's version -- penned by Linda Woolverton -- is actually more of a sequel to those works than a faithful recreation of them. After a brief prologue showing our titular protagonist as a young girl describing her wild dreams to her businessman father, the film jumps forward thirteen years. That's when Alice (Mia Wasikowska) finds herself facing an arranged marriage to a young and decidedly square nobleman and thus a quite likely stuffy future. Using her sighting of the White Rabbit as a means of taking a time-out from the public proposal, she ends up falling down the rabbit hole and into the far-out Underland ("Wonderland" to some).
She then does the shrinking and growing bit with the locked doors as before, but the plot then quickly diverts from the original material, with various references to this being her second visit there (she doesn't recall the first and thinks this is yet another dream, just as she classified her original and more juvenile adventure). While diehard Carroll aficionados might not like the decidedly less than faithful adaptation, such a premise does allow Burton and company the freedom to do something new with the material, yet keep enough components so that the offering still feels familiar.
Considering it's his and Burton's seventh time collaborating on a film, I guess it shouldn't come as a surprise that Johnny Depp's portrayal of the Mad Hatter has been expanded to the point that he's now a main character and gets top billing in both the credits and advertisements for the film. The actor has an undeniable knack for burrowing himself into oddball characters and -- outfitted with messy orange hair, wild eyebrows and digitally enhanced peepers -- manages to bring just enough humanity to the part that the character thankfully avoids becoming an increasingly annoying contrivance.
Wasikowska is fine as the lead, and Helena Bonham Carter is a hoot as the short-tempered but huge-headed Red Queen (alas, Anne Hathaway as her more level and normal headed sister and now adversary doesn't work nearly as well and feels out of place). The effects are all top-notch, if rendered in a decidedly Burtonesque fashion (the 3D adds depth, but not much more), and my favorite, as in the books, is the wispy and still creepy Cheshire Cat (wonderfully voiced by Stephen Fry).
In fact, and is oft the case with many of the better or at least memorable offerings in fantasy-based children's fiction, this one has plenty of nightmare inducing elements, including a moat full of severed human heads and encounters with various monsters. The latter includes the obligatory concluding battle sequence that's a new addition to the Alice legend and perhaps is a bit too "inspired" by similar large scale clashes found in the "Narnia," "Lord of the Rings" and other such films. That's followed by an "off to the Orient" coda that's similarly novel to the tale, but feels out of place with the rest of the offering (even if it signifies the young woman cementing her status of being far ahead of her time in terms of feminine independence).
Overall, the effort is certainly easy enough to watch, and contains various fun and entertaining moments. Yet, the best are of the secondary rather than primary nature, and lack of emotional involvement in the main character's plight does prevent the film from being as engaging as I would have liked to have experienced. It's not a terrible flaw, but it does prevent Burton's adaptation of the classic tale from obtaining greatness. "Alice in Wonderland" rates as a 6 out of 10.
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