‘Alice in Wonderland:’ Curiouser and Mediocre-rer

The new Tim Burton- helmed remake of Alice in Wonderland promises to take ticket buyers on a wondrous 3-D lark through the famous filmmaker's marketably strange imagination. Too bad the final cut left me eager to tumble back up the rabbit hole to the theater exit, casting my uncomfortable 3-D glasses into the refuse bin and advising readers to avoid this gaudy, unpleasant Disney release.

It would appear that I'm too late to save many of our readers, however: Alice in Wonderland grossed $116 million during its opening weekend, benefitting from a paucity of competing children's fare as well as increased ticket prices for IMAX and 3-D screens.

Tim Burton has an almost instantly recognizable aesthetic, from his German-Expressionist-inspired set design to bored-looking, deathly pale blonde waifs as leading ladies. His signature look has suffered with the advancement of computerized special effects, however, as his once-brilliant character design has been supplanted by impersonally rendered CGI grotesques. Indeed, many of the feature players in Burton's Wonderland have had their features digitally grotesque-ified, from Helena Bonham Carter's bulbous heart-shaped forehead atop a dwarfish body and Crispin Glover's oddly stretched torso to Johnny Depp's bugged out green eyes.

It's a mystery to me why Depp continues to debase himself in Burton's current films. The oeuvre of the unlikely hitmaker has plummeted throughout the ‘00s, and most of his recent pairings with Depp have cast an actor of uniquely effortless charisma in the most unlikable roles imaginable. The creepy, obnoxiously petulant man child from the unnerving Tim Burton reboot of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the sneering, mumble-singing murderer of Sweeny Todd come to mind, and his characterization of the Mad Hatter ignominiously continues this tradition. In creepy goth-clown make-up, Depp's speaking voice shifts from a kooky lisp to a Scottish brogue at random and with no provocation, flailing through an expanded Hatter role that never connects.

Which brings us to the story.

Opting to re-imagine key details of Carrol's book, this new iteration finds a 19-year old Alice, played by young actress Mia Wasikowska, tumbling once more down the proverbial rabbit hole, only having forgotten her prior excursions to Wonderland. The trippy surrealism of the book and the masterful Disney feature cartoon is all but lost in Burton's scissor hands, replacing their rambling dreamlike tone and pace with a boring, straightforward quest archetype. Alice, you see, is predestined to slay the Jabberwocky from Carrol's Through the Looking Glass. That's it. That's all the movie's about. Millions of dollars and production rights to one of the most beloved stories of all time, and that's what Tim Burton gives us: a half-hearted predestination fable that hits all the same notes as the thousands of movies with identical plot structures. This film is a tea party for which you should most certainly be late.

Rated ‘PG'

109 minutes

Sci-fi/Fantasy/Family

Starring

Mia Wasikowska, Anne Hathaway and Johnny Depp