Burton in Wonderland

Tim Burton isobviously drawn to the look if not the substance of Victorian Gothic, and toprotagonists relentless in their refusal (or inability) to conform. Littlewonder he wanted to direct Lewis Carroll’s AliceinWonderland, a Victorianclassic about a girl who flings herself down a rabbit hole into a world wherethe tedious logic of Western civilization is made to dance on its head.

Alas, Burton’s Alice in Wonderland is a largely mirthlessenterprise. The director appears more interested in mining the attentiondeficit demographic than interpreting the richness of the story. For manystretches, Alicethe Movie is a kinetic spectacle of seen-it-before computer graphics as not somarvelous beasties chase each other across a fantasy landscape.

Burton conceived his film as a sequel to Carroll’s story, which is not a badidea (even though Carroll wrote his own sequel whose plot is unrelated to Burton’s). In the filmversion, Alicehas become a young woman whose only memory of her childhood adventure inWonderland is an odd, recurring dream. Bright and imaginative in a rigidlydisapproving Victorian upper class society, she is prodded to marry a wealthylord, a twit of the first order. Aliceescapes the engagement party by dashing after a waist-coated rabbit (voiced byMichael Sheen) down his hole and into the Wonderland of unconscious memory. Burton’s scenario couldwork as social satire if only it were funny.

Johnny Depp wasborn to play the Mad the Hatter, and his fright-wigged performance is among thefilm’s bright spots, along with the imaginative visualization of the enigmaticCheshire Cat (Stephen Fry) as a creature capable of dissolving into a cloud ofsmoke. Helena Bonham Carter delivers one of her trademark whackjob performancesas the Red Queen, her character transformed into a tyrant in a story thatbegins to resemble Narnia shorn of spiritual allegory. The moral of Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, that all the bestpeople are a little off their heads, is the motif behind most of his films. Hehas done a better job elsewhere of presenting the idea.