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Review: Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland (2010)

Those of you unfortunate enough to experience the musicals Mamma Mia or We Will Rock You will be accustomed to the practice of forcing random song lyrics into a narrative. If not, the line "We're just ga ga about radio" should give you a clue. As should this movie. A live-action sequel to the Disney Alice In Wonderland movie.

So we have the Jabberwocky poem, an exercise in taking obscure words and finding a new sense in them, taken seriously as text and used as a backbone for the film's plot. So we have a Frabjous Day to look forward to, a Vorpal Sword to hunt down and a Jabberwock to slay, along with JuJub birds and Bandersnatches. And words that were never intended to have any other life, get puffed up by The Lion King's Linda Woolverton's screenplay into something else to justify their use. And no manner of inflation can disguise how thin this film is, characters that feel cold and distant, and attempts to herd these shadowy beasts into some semblance of a search of a plot feels like trying to staple gun jello into a noticeboard to let people know about an impending fun run.

And yet.

This film is beautiful. From the astounding fall down the rabbit hole, the amazing early shot of a dragonfly fighting a unicornfly, through the wondrous definitive Red Queen in Helena Bonham Carter whose massive head feels so, so natural and right, to a truly disturbing and haunted Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter and a convincing Roger-Rabbit-made-flesh March Hare, this film looks so good. And in 3D it positively drips off the screen, a very real and absorbing Wonderland. And yes, this is a shot-in-2D-translated-into-3D movie but the resultant paperthinness of the pure live-action characters at the beginning only make Wonderland's richness greater.

And I want to go on at length about these. The Cheshire Cat is Nightcrawler mixed with the smoothest cigar smoke, appearing and disappearing across the screen like the cat that got the gasified cream with the rich tones that have made Stephen Fry such a sought after commodity. The Red Queen's army of cards (yes, I know, mixing our Queens but that's what Disney did the first time) is a remarkably well designed crowd. And The White Queen doing a Nigella Lawson magical recipe is a high point, and the dormouse channelling Reepicheep makes for more of a spectacle that a curled up sleepyhead. The Jabberwock is pure Tenniel summoned into existence. Matt Lucus' every bemused expression captured and projected onto the Tweedledum and Tweedledee grotesques with perfection. And Alice is absorbed into the madness, coming off somewhere between a stroppy teenager, a confused girl and a pragmatic school mistress.

And if you go in for the look of the thing, you are not going to be disappointed in any way. You will be dazzled, thrilled and lifted from humdrum reality. But it's a magic trick, there's nothing here. Which is of course the truth about any such cinematic spectacle, light beams dancing through the air, bouncing off our retinas, converting into electrical impulses – all that we can ever truly experience. But the illusion is not normally quite so transparent. And the sop that this is somehow a story about a young woman making up her mind and finding her own adventures in life feels forced on to in some way justify the very film's existence, as if to say, "look! This film was about something after all" when it was clearly just an excuse to regurgitate ravens and writing desks. Avatar may have been basic but it had heart expressed with conviction and won me over. This film seems to tick boxes instead.

Now, Lewis Carroll's original stories were basically exercises in language, game theory, surrealism, allegory, parody and nonsense speak. Holding a narrative was never a focus. This attempt to force one upon it, to find relevance where there none, exposes its emptiness without the compensatory joy that accompanies it. Someone is taking apart the golden goose and then trying to put it back together as an eagle. And holding a hand out, expectant for an egg.

Tim Burton is a fine cartoonist, a trait he shares with the likes of David Lynch and Terry Gilliam. And he makes a great Tenniel stand-in here, portraying the Underworld of Alice remarkably and convincingly. But he is working from a script that is very sub-Carroll. It smacks of something posted on Usenet in 1994 by someone in love with the Mad Hatter who lives alone with their Cheshire Cats. Alice In Wonderland, I name thee fan fic.

The very prettiest of fan fic though.

And of course the kids will love it. But they'll love anything.

Alice In Wonderland will now play across the UK, as all the boycotting cinemas have backed down from their DVD window protest. Last time, over Pixar's Up, Disney blinked. This time it was the cinemas. I don't think it will be Disney again…

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