Directed by Tim Burton
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Alice in
Wonderland Just
so you know, “Alice in Wonderland” was not filmed in 3-D, but in
glorious old two-dimensions, then converted to 3-D
in the optical editing. And you
don’t need to see it in 3-D because very little on screen is enhanced
at all by the addition of another D, other than the very final shot of Absolem the Caterpillar, now a butterfly, of course, as
he flutters from the plane of the screen out toward the audience in the beam
of the projector – a nice touch, but definitely not worth the extra
money. Having
said that, “Alice in Wonderland” turns out to be a wonderfully
tasty Tim Burton film. It’s
not Lewis Carroll’s story, though it uses many of his characters, and
up until a studio-crafted violent ending (Alice cuts off the
Jabberwocky’s head, on screen) the film is astonishingly sweet and
witty. It begins with
the19-year-old Alice being brought out to her aunt’s lawn for her
engagement party to an utter dunce.
But Alice sees a rabbit in a waistcoat and follows it down the hole
into Underland, where she is in immediate danger
from the Red Queen (“Off with their heads,” screams Helena Bonham
Carter) and must use her allies – Johnny Depp
as the Mad Hatter, Stephen Fry as a disappearing Cheshire Cat, Alan Rickman
as Absolem the Caterpillar, and a few others, all
of them just delicious in their roles – to escape the Red Queen and
find her sister the White Queen (Anne Hathaway). Alice is nicely played by Mia Wasikowska as a mix of innocence and daring. Burton’s
scriptwriter is Linda Woolverton, and she and Burton
have made a wise decision by moving Alice from her traditional age as an
8-year-old into the 19-year-old who can look back on her first encounter with
all the characters of the stories – bits are taken both from
“Alice in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking Glass”
– and react this time more as an adult. There’s no writing down or
any kind of insistence on looking at events through a child’s eyes, and
the film’s bookends of the engagement party and the marriage proposal
are entirely appropriate. And
Burton has done a wonderfully bizarre thing: almost all the Underland characters except for Depp
as the Mad Hatter have been digitally reshaped into great exaggerations of
themselves – the Red Queen has a huge head, the Cheshire Cat has a
great smile, Tweedledum and Tweedledee
are round, fat little men – and Depp has that
beautiful, mobile face and with his makeup he needs no digital work at
all. I was enchanted with
“Alice,” and I think you will be too. |