Director Tim Burton, seemingly a perfect fit for the material, has taken the latest crack at breathing new life into Carroll’s classic creations and the results are, like a lot of his work, mixed. On the one hand, his take on Alice (in theaters now) is a visual treat overflowing with his usual twisty whimsicalness and ironic sense of the absurd. But on the other hand, it has a frustrating lack of focus, characterized by his penchant to be a little too wrapped up in putting his unique imagination on display. If anything, this film’s computer generated landscapes and digitally enhanced characters (plus the added gimmick of 3-D) make this even more obvious.
Promisingly enough, Burton’s Alice is not a direct adaptation of the oft-told tale, but more of a sequel of sorts, a continuation (penned by Beauty and the Beast screenwriter Linda Woolverton) of what would happen if an older Alice returned to Wonderland. Now on the cusp of adulthood, we find our heroine (played by the lovely newcomer Mia Wasikowska) about to be married off to a rich snoot she doesn’t like, let alone love. To escape, she retreats into her childhood fantasies, namely a longtime recurring dream where she visits a fantastic land inhabited by all sorts of curiouser and curiouser beings, from mad hatters to disappearing cats to talking rabbits.
When the latter starts appearing in her reality, Alice once again follows him through the portal to Wonderland, and her adventures there begin again, as she curiously has no memory of ever being there before ...
Click here to continue reading my Toon Talk review of Alice in Wonderland at LaughingPlace.com.
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