Alice in Wonderland (Walt Disney Pictures) (2010)
2010 Movies: Alice in Wonderland
19-year-old Alice returns to the magical world from her childhood adventure, where she reunites with her old friends and learns of her true destiny: to end the Red Queen’s reign of terror. |
The Wonderland that Burton imagines rekindles our cherished recollections of Alice’s adventures while landscaping it in the rich, patented Goth look the filmmaker treasures. The dark tone makes the film’s target audience more along the lines of the “Twilight” and college-age set than the SpongeBob sort as it’s likely to freak out little ones.
The plot toys with the two Carroll classics, “Alice in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking Glass.” Late in the film we learn that we should start calling Alice’s secret habitat Underland, not Wonderland, because a younger Alice mangled the pronunciation during her first rabbit hole plunge.
This revelation is one sign that this “Alice” isn’t interested in being a mirror image of Carroll’s fables, an approach that works most of the time while still retaining the wonderment of the first Alice book, published in 1865.
Burton and screenwriter Linda Woolverton (Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast”) present us with an older, more feminist-minded Alice (newcomer Mia Wasikowska, who stands tall here in every way). The 19-year-old Alice doesn’t fit into tightly buttoned English society, especially when she discovers at a tea party that she’s likely to become the betrothed of an ugly snob. Our heroine interrupts the proposal by making a mad dash after the forever-late rabbit and, well, you know where she’s headed.
Alice discovers she’s the key component in ending the feud between squabbling sisters the Red Queen and the White Queen. This gives Burton a chance to really play with effects in a climactic showdown that summons up one frightful Jabberwocky and an army of cards. It’s great fun, and helps us forgive but not forget lesser scenes, including a rather uninspired barreling to the bottom of the rabbit hole and some White Queen malarkey.
Because of these foibles, “Wonderland” never quite becomes magical. You leave the theater with a pleasant grin on your face, but by no means is it as wide as the Cheshire Cat’s, and that’s a shame.
