by Roger Bourke White Jr., copyright March 2010
Pay no attention to the title, Disney tells only one story.
Alice in Wonderland follows lock-step in the 21st century tradition of using gee-whiz effects to rehash the same old story formulas.
In this case, it's not even the same old Alice in Wonderland story, it's the same old Disney story of a nice child surrounded by snooty prescriptive adults who goes through a right-of-passage dramatic epic and finds happiness by being himself or herself. It is so important to Disney to get this formula right that in this version of the story Alice is revisiting Wonderland for a second time -- this twist frees them from having to include any Lewis Carrollisms.
It doesn't matter what title Disney puts on the movie, it is always this same story. And, sadly, this time Burton and Depp seem to have fully succumbed to this Disney influence. I saw little of the entertaining ideosyncracy these two can often bring to a movie. It's as if the Disney story lured these two into a dark alley, mugged them, and stole all their whimsy.
And, sadly, these days I'm noting some monotony in the gee-whiz special effects, too:
o All the CGI animals run like horses galloping. In this movie, the bloodhound and the bandersnatch, and in Cameron's Avatar the six-legged horse-thingies -- which, I admit, made them look really alien, but not in the right way.
o All the monsters roar the same way -- cock their head to the right, open their mouth a bit, start the roar, move head to face the camera while opening their mouth opening fully wide, roar continues, then ends, then cut to next scene.
What is missing from this Alice version that was plentiful and enjoyable in the 1951 Disney animated version is whimsy -- odd little things happening that are light-hearted and just there for fun. What comes to mind is the scene in the '51 version where Alice is following a trail at night when she encounters a hound with a brush for a nose. The hound is sweeping the trail out of existence. He sweeps up to Alice, politely notices her, then sweeps around her and out of the scene. Alice is left trailess. "Oh no!" she cries, and this is when the cresent moon tips over to become the Cheshire Cat smile. This scene was fun! Burton and Depp know how to do whimsy well, but they didn't do any to speak of in this production, so what came out was disappointing and tiresome... the same old Disney story. <sigh>
So, if you want to see a full-of-whimsy version of Alice in Wonderland, which I recommend, see the 1951 version. It's fun, and a different story.
Beyond the ponderous and tedious handling of the story this time, here are a few technofiction flaws I noticed:
o The setting at the beginning of the movie (real world setting) seems to be Victorian, which spans from the 1830's to 1900. Yet the ships Alice is getting into at the end of the movie are 1700's era, while her bold proposition to extend trade all the way to China is 1500's era -- this was the plan Columbus proposed to Queen Isabella of Castile.
o In this version Alice's clothes don't shrink and grow with her. Since this happens so often, the resulting search for new clothes takes up too much time. And since this is a dream, there's no reason her clothes can't grow and shrink and otherwise change at will. (But then, young women do think a lot about clothing all the time, and what Alice is wearing is brought up in the first scene of the movie... so... maybe.)
o One of the tedious parts of Disney stories is their handling of prophecy. Disney stories usually outline themselves at the beginning with a prophecy. This is one is no exception. I grow tired of the contradiction of a character learning to be himself or herself by not escaping a predestination.
o In the middle of the movie we have one of those typically silly plot twists: Alice goes to the Red Queen castle to rescue the Hatter, a person she has met only minutes earlier.
o In the final battle with the Jabberwocky, Alice for no good reason runs up the stairs in a ruin, and then is suprised when she runs out of stairs.
In sum, I was disappointed. I was hoping for a CGI version of the whimsical 1951 adaptation, but instead I got the contemporary Disney epic action coming-of-age-and-being-yourself story.
-- The End --