Finally got around to seeing the new Alice in Wonderland movie tonight. Now I can’t shake the question: what was that? How did a Tim Burton version of Lewis Carroll turn out so stupid and formulaic?
When I first heard that Burton was going to do an Alice movie, I was stoked. I was thinking about Burton’s stylistic debt to the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and picturing some kind of Expressionistic version of the tale. Instead, it’s boring! I never in a million years would have thought it would turn out. . .boring.
Is it a case of DFW’s Inverse Cost and Quality Law? The cost of all that CGI neccesitates that the plot be an old time-tested, family pleasing chestnut? Girl surmounts the odds, embraces her destiny, slays a dragon. Well, fine, but don’t do that to Lewis Fucking Carroll, OK? He’s the king of nonsense and you turn his finest books into another bland kiddie adventure story? I can understand writing a screenplay with a bit more plot than the books, but this plot has no relation to the spirit of Carroll’s books. It’s basically just a recast Wizard of Oz.
Behold! the Mad Hatter recast as the Scarecrow and Alice as Dorothy. Throughout the movie I was just shaking my head in amazement: really? the Mad Hatter? Alice is now besties with the Mad $(%*# Hatter?! And obviously the White Queen is nothing more than Glinda here. Nothing pissed me off more in this adaptation than the White Queen. In the books she’s a dotty old lady. My reaction to Anne Hathaway in this film is: “Ma’am, you are no Carol Channing.” Now THERE was an excellent interpretation of the White Queen!
(fab Carol Channing pic from aliceinwonderland1985.com)
