Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland

I love Tim Burton. I really do, I can’t think of a single film maker that has always made me want to watch his movies, just by name alone. They always have an interesting style and are usually pretty entertaining. Yeah, he’s had a few exceptions like the “Planet of the Apes” and “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” remakes, but being fair, I don’t really hate those. In fact, I can’t even say that I’ve actually hated anything that he’s ever done.
Then I watched his take on “Alice in Wonderland”. I was so psyched for this movie, I usually try to avoid that but this was a case where I couldn’t help it. This is Tim Fucking Burton! This is a guy that makes movies that are, if nothing else, nicely surreal. And this was a book that had things like giant hookah smoking caterpillar, talking animals, and things that make you grow and shrink just by eating them. If anything, this was a match made in fucking heaven! And yet, it still sucked! I can’t believe I’m saying that, but this movie sucked!
How did this happen? I mean, this makes my brain hurt trying to figure it out. Did the producers not let Burton have creative freedom? Or worse, did they just let him go nuts? I used to think that if the director has total control on production, they can always turn in something great. Now, thanks to George Lucas showing us what a moron he is, I’ve opened my mind to other options, and I sadly have to think option two was the case here. It really just seems Burton kept saying: “You know what we need here? An action scene. And here, we totally need a dragon thing voiced by Christopher Lee that only has one line.” AND NO ONE STOPPED HIM! No one at any point, pointed out if something was the most idiotic thing they’ve ever heard in their life. This movie makes less sense than the book, doesn’t really go anywhere really, and just kind of stops at the end. Ummm… the phrase “what the fuck?” comes to mind here. I’ve actually pondered this movie for a few weeks and I still can’t even pick where to start explaining the badness here, but dammit I’m going to try.
First, I’ll get the small amount of praise I have out of the way here: Visually, this movie is amazing. Wonderland is twisted and dark with Burton’s trademark style and design. The final battle at the climax looks amazing, I’d almost say it was epic even. And the character designs, with one real exception, are actually interesting and really feel like some of the creatures are coming alive right out of the book. It was nice to see, and had a small glimmer of fascination for me.
Here however, my hatred begins. This plot makes no sense. No. Don’t even start by saying “the book didn’t make sense either”, that’s a weak argument. The book was exactly what the title said it was, a girl named ALICE, travels to WONDERLAND, and has ADVENTURES, that’s it. Couple that with the fact this book has been adapted several times into other movies and your argument will get less and less valid. The plot of the book is a girl falls down a hole, wanders through a magical world with fun creatures while keeping her sanity, and goes home. Not too hard. Now, here are some questions I came up with watching the Tim Burton movie:

“Why does this movie start off like ‘Pride and Prejudice’ as written by someone that has never read the book?”

“Ummm…. Why do all the characters call this place Underland?”

“Who’s the Darth Vader rip off being played by the dad from ‘Back to the Future’?”

“What is the point of all this? I mean, how is this entertaining?”

“Why am I getting a huge ‘Star Wars’ vibe here?”

“Is this movie ever going to try?”

“Seriously, who let Tim Burton watch ‘Star Wars’ too much in pre-production?”

“Why am I still watching this?”

I’m drawing blanks on the answers. But here’s how I’ll sum up the movie’s plot: Watch the original “Star Wars” trilogy, condense the whole story into about an hour and a half, remove all the good stuff, and then try to make it seem random and disjointed. There you go. It’s actually why I got so confused watching this movie. At times, it feels like, ok so she’s going on a little quest thing now, no wait, she’s still kind of just wandering, seeing weird looking stuff. Suddenly, a plot element will show up, introduce new stuff, and now we’re on that quest again. Yeah, this was kind of what happened in the book and in other adaptations, but the difference here is that this isn’t interesting. It took a fascinating romp through another world, the only motivation really being Alice’s curiosity, and turned it into a movie about rebels trying to fight an evil ruler that has an unstoppable weapon that can only be destroyed by the main character. I’m fine with trying to give the movie a more cohesive plot, but I mean really? Are you fucking serious? It’s pretty obvious the plot you’re futilely forcing in doesn’t belong. I almost got to the point where I wanted to try and put the “Star Wars” music on, just because it was getting that ridiculous.
Added to that, it doesn’t seem like any of the characters work in this story. I don’t care how much Tim Burton says in interviews that he wanted to make his own version. I don’t care if it looks pretty. I don’t fucking care if Ann Hathaway is some weird witch/queen/I don’t know what kind of thing! This isn’t going to cut it! Maybe, MAYBE if the movie was half an hour to forty-five minutes longer, and you actually had time to, I don’t know, set up and finish story elements in less than five minutes of total run time? If this movie had just decided that it wanted to either have a story, or be totally random I honestly wouldn’t care. I’d call it a mediocre rip off that looked nice, or something weird, but maybe a little fun and be done with it. But no, it’s a disjointed mess that tries to have both no story, and too much story. This is just sad, sloppy, lazy film making.
The characters were, well… I’m not sure what to say. No one save Alice, the Hatter, the Red and White Queens, and the Cheshire Cat has any real significant screen time to do much of anything. They’re just there. They aren’t bad or anything, actually most of the performances are pretty good, but they make no real mark. The two Queens, played by Anne Hathaway and Helena Bonham Carter, are just… I hesitate to use the word strange since this is supposed to be Wonder… Sorry, UNDERland, but I’m just bewildered about these two. They don’t really seem to do anything until the end of the movie, (SPOILER ALERT) where they then proceed to do even more nothing. The Red Queen doesn’t come on screen until about half an hour in, and most of her character traits are told to us in exposition before Bonham Carter even starts gnawing on the scenery, where she just chews and chews and really that’s it. No rhyme or reason for her other than the movie needed a villain. And I still can’t find any fucking reason why Anne Hathaway’s character is in this movie! Yeah, I guess she’s the leader that will take back the throne and rule justly, but if all you’re going to do is explain who she is, and she’s going to do pretty much nothing the whole movie, why is she here?
The one that mystified me the most though, was the Hatter. I don’t have as many questions as the two queens, in fact, I think he’s the character I have the fewest gripes about, but I do have one question that has lingered in my mind:

“Why does Johnny Depp look like Ronald MacDonald in the late stages of meth addiction?”

You know that one exception to character design I mentioned? Ta da! Here it is! Granted I saw the design and knew what he looked like going in, but I figured I could get over it as the movie went on. I was wrong. I just kept sitting there, wondering how any of the other actors couldn’t keep from laughing the whole time. Maybe if it was the crazy story from the book this would work, but if you’re going to have the Hatter say things that are supposed to be serious… Yeah, that design is not working.
Basically, this movie raises too many questions in all the wrong ways. Not the least of which was, why? What was the fucking point?! Granted the visuals were cool, and the editing was smooth, but that’s it. From a purely technical stand point, this movie is really interesting. But as far as story, I go back to my initial “what the fuck?” from earlier. I’m going to just call this the Tim Burton equivalent to “The Phantom Menace”, so much anticipation, so much disappointment.