ALICE IN WONDERLAND

Master of flamboyant fantasy doesn’t let his fans down with his latest film. (Review by Billy Suter, courtesy of The Mercury)

One can always rely on audacious director Tim Burton to delight and excite, and the master of flamboyant fantasy doesn’t let his fans down with his latest film, Alice In Wonderland, which marks his seventh teaming with actor Johnny Depp and sixth with wife Helena Bonham-Carter.

The film combines plot lines and characters from two of Lewis Carroll’s books, Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, the script coming from Linda Woolverton, whose credits include Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King. Burton conjures a spectacular, trippy adventure that is a constant joy. Be warned, however, that this is not the frothy, glossy Alice of animated Disney of old, but an altogether darker, more witty and loopy look at the story of a young girl’s colourful imagination and coming of age.

Alice here is a 19-year-old in Victorian England, a pretty, somewhat serious girl under a cascade of blonde curls, played by Aussie actress Mia Wasikowska, who resembles a cross between Martha Plimpton and Gwyneth Paltrow. She’s perfectly cast, as is just about every other principal, in a tale that opens with Alice and her mother attending a stuffy garden-party planned as a surprise for a dorky lord to proposal his hand in marriage.

The thought of it sends Alice scuttling along a garden path to, you guessed it, follow a rabbit (voiced by Michael Sheen) down a hatch, thus giving us our first glimpse of Burton’s computer-generated fantasy world – and our first opportunity to wear the Clark Kent-like glasses for the 3D experience.

Once in Wonderland, depicted in darker hues and with more gnarled forests than that in the 1951 animated classic, Alice gets to slowly realise she’s tripped into this weird world before – and she’s soon crossing paths with old friends. She also gets to cross swords, both figuratively and literally, with foes – the bigheaded (literally) Red Queen, played with panto relish by Helena Bonham Carter; and the fearsome Jabberwocky (voiced by Christopher Lee), a winged creature sure to give some kids nightmares.

Other favourites are here, too, and all are voiced by a stellar cast. Among them is an orange-haired Johnny Deep, with fluctuating accents and eyes digitally enlarged, as Mad Hatter; and Little Britain comic Matt Lucas as computer-generated obese twins Tweedledee and Tweedledum. Then there’s Stephen Fry as the disembodied Cheshire Cat who comes and goes in a cloud of vapour, Alan Rickman as the smoking Blue Caterpillar and Anne Hathaway as the White Queen whose delicate, panto fairy-like performance makes one think of good witch Glinda in The Wizard of Oz. Also listen out for the voices of Barbara Windsor (Dormouse), Timothy Spall (Bayard the dog), Crispin Glover (Stayne, the Knave of Hearts), Michael Gough (Dodo) and Paul Whitehouse (March Hare).

Burton has succeeded in his aim of adding some emotional depth to the film, seeking to create more of a story rather than simply have Alice wander from one crazy situation to another. Another huge plus is that the landscape – including talking flowers, multi-coloured giant mushrooms and turreted castles – as well as the dazzling costumes and the wonders of special effects master Ken Ralston are Oscar-worthy brilliant. Ralston and Burton play continually with perspective, not only with the ever-height-changing Alice, but also other characters, many of whom have enlarged or elongated body parts.

Purists might roll their eyes at some of the liberties taken with the story, but there is no denying that Burton was the right man for the job of bringing this classic tale into the 21st century. Rating: 8/10 – Billy Suter