So I saw Alice in Wonderland last night. 2D only because I don’t want to support the practice of making 2D movies and then pushing them into 3D later to jump on the trend. What can I say, I’m a 3D purist? (Stubborn is more like it.) Anyway, I knew going in that there was no way that this film wasn’t going to disappoint me in some sense. I’m a huge fan of the original Disney cartoon for Alice in Wonderland. I’m a huge Tim Burton fan, especially when he works with Johnny Depp (which is pretty much all the time now, right?), so there was no way this could possibly live up to the expectations that I immediately built up in my head when the film was announced and when the first images were released over the past couple of years. And unfortunately, it did disappoint me. Don’t get me wrong. I very much enjoyed it (or at least the first 2/3s of it). The images and colors were spectacular. There were a ton of visual homages to the original Disney animated version which I appreciated. The casting was fantastic, especially the inspired choice of relative-unknown Mia Wasikowska as the titular Alice. She was wonderfully sweet, and stunningly beautiful, no matter how large or small she was on screen at the time. I have no doubt that she will springboard this break into stardom. And ultimately the movie is going to be a huge success, which is great because it should allow Burton to make whatever movies he wants, and Depp to continue to have the ability to get any project greenlighted for him.
Random aside: Speaking of Depp, has any American (he was born in Kentucky according to IMDB.com) in recent memory had more famous roles playing non-Americans? We hear all the time of the Brits and Australians playing Americans in film and on TV, but rarelycan I think of any American who has so consistently played foreign. This occurred to me last night while watching him play The Mad Hatter with a Scottish brogue . Now, looking at IMDB.com, do I realize just how crazy it is. Other than his turn as John Dillinger in Public Enemies, almost all of his films roles have been as non-Americans. Sweeney Todd (British), Captain Jack Sparrow in 3 films (origins unknown, but definitely not American), Willy Wonka in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (British), Victor van Dort in The Corpse Bride (fairly certain this takes place in England), the Earl of Rochester in The Libertine, J.M. Barrie in Finding Neverland (Scottish but not played with a brogue), Inspector Frederick Alberline in From Hell (British), and Roux from Chocolat (French, right?) You really have to go back to the 1990’s to find him playing an Ameican role.
In the film, Hatter at one point accuses Alice of losing her “muchness”, and I think what disappointed me most in this film is that it seemed the Burton/Depp combo lacked their own “muchness”. I suppose I had really expected some classic Burton dark turn (thinking Batman and Edward Scissorhands) and instead got a slightly quirky Disney film. I don’t think the difference would have been as egregiously noticeable if it hadn’t been for Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth. What del Toro did with his own version of Wonderland in that film, clearly set the standard for what a Burton film could have accomplished with this classic text. And unfortunately it didn’t. I recognize that this was a tent pole studio film with a PG rating, whereas Pan’s Labyrinth was an art-house flick that netted less in it’s entire run ($84 mill worldwide) than Alice will this weekend (UPDATED: After a $40 million opening day, it is on track to break March records with a $110-$120 million haul!), but that didn’t keep me from wanting more. I wanted them to explore this world more, and find all the depths and quirks that an auteur like Burton has the ability to draw out. I would have liked to have spent more time seeing what dark changes had happened in the past 12 years under the Red Queen’s rule. But all in all, I enjoyed it, and I’m sure I will watch it on HBO half a dozen times or so over the next couple of years but I might just skip the last half hour.
