Alice in Wonderland

Official movie poster

Hype has the tendency to ruin movies. It raises your expectations beyond what any reasonable movie should be able to deliver and sets you up for disappointment. Unfortunately, Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland falls into this category.

Normally, I would try to divorce myself from everything having to do with the film except the work itself, but nearly two years of buzz and press surrounding any movie is hard to ignore.

I tried to lower my expectations, I really did. I told myself I would not like the film, a tactic which has generally proven effective in yielding my favorable opinion of a film. But this time was different.

In Alice’s (Mia Wasikowska) second trip to Wonderland (or Underland, as she is corrected by its inhabitants), she finds herself caught between the strangeness of deja vu and utter confusion. The world she returns to find is quite different than the one she left as a child, though remnants of the old still remain. Hints of painting white roses red, seemingly endless rabbit holes and “drink me” potions orient the viewer back into Lewis Carroll’s crazy, mixed-up, upside-down world.

But this is a far cry from the colorfully mad world of the Disney animated movie. The landscape is desolate, ravaged by the war between the two queen sisters (the evil and quirky Red Queen played by Helena Bonham Carter and the elegantly benevolent White Queen played by Anne Hathaway). And the colors are dark and harsh, despite the glowing oranges and neon greens used in nearly all the movie posters and billboards lining the highways.

This is not your childhood Wonderland. Even the foreknowledge of Burton’s propensity for the twisted and terrible is not enough to prepare for what the film offers. I expected a wild, mad world where hare’s threw teaparties (literally, throwing teaparties) and giant blue caterpillar’s smoked hookah (that’s Alan Rickman’s voice, in case you have trouble placing it like I did), but what I got was a violent, scary, bipolar, schizophrenic race through the mind of a mad man. One who belongs in back in Sweeney Todd, if you ask me. After this, I belive I prefer Narnia to Wonderland. At least I knew what I was getting myself into with that.

That is not to say that there weren’t bright spots (which came a quite a relief from all the threats of decapitation and terrifying Bandersnatch roaring). Hathaway delivers a delightful perfomance as the queen who literally would not hurt a fly (it’s against her vows, you see) and brings just the right amout of her Princess Diaries costar Julie Andrews to the role, providing enough levity to keep you from feeling like you belong locked up in the nuthouse next to the hatter. As a counterbalance to the ferocity of her sister’s bloodlust, she is wonderful. It’s almost remiscent of The Wizard of Oz in the way the two sister’s are diometrically opposed as good and evil. And as the Red Queen ponders whether it is better to be feared than loved, it is clear she is the former and her sister is the latter.

And though the rest of the cast delivers performances on par with expectations, it is only because each is in a role we’ve come to expect from them. Carter is the impetuous, off-the-wall queen that mixes the psychosis of Fight Club’s Marla Singer, the unkempt nature of Sweeny Todd’s Ms. Lovett and the oddity of her recent street style as captured by the paparazzi. And inevitably, the reunion of Burton and Depp would lead Depp to an extreme of the madcap characters he popularized in Willy Wonka, Sweeny Todd and even the Pirates franchise. And though it’s too soon to compare Wasikowska’s perfomance to any of her previous roles, once she plays Jane in Jane Eyre next year, I’m sure we will hearken back to this role, at least, to her time spend on this side of the rabbit hole.

Forgive me, but I just have to ask, “Are you mad, Tim Burton?”

To which I’m sure he’d reply, “I’m afraid so. I’m terribly bonkers. But I’ll tell you a secret. All the best people are.”

Touche, Tim Burton, touche. But I’m afraid you’ve gone a little too far with this one or, are, at least, guilty of false advertising.