Posted on 01 March 2010

Alice in Wonderland
Mia Wasikowska, Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham-Carter, Crispin Glover
Directed by Tim Burton
Release Date: March 4
Rating: TBC

 
It has been 150 years since Lewis Carroll first shoved Alice down the rabbit hole, and in the intervening decades, the story has been fodder for countless cartoons, skin flicks, and cannabis connoisseurs everywhere.
 
With such rich and wacky source material to play with, it was inevitable that Tim Burton would one day explore the world of Wonderland — after all, the big-haired, big-brained director has forged a career out of bringing weird to the big screen.
 
Burton’s Alice (the luminous Mia Wasikowska) is nineteen, and on the brink of being married off to wildly boring git, Lord Ascot. During Ascot’s excruciating marriage proposal, a distracted Alice spots a white rabbit in a waistcoat, and immediately takes off after the sartorially splendid critter, leaving her would-be groom, and the real world behind.
 
After tumbling into a darkened hole and chowing down on a slice of cake, Alice finds herself in Underland, a place that is at once eerily familiar and frighteningly alien. She quickly encounters a host of bizarre creatures, who inform her that not only has she visited Underland before; she is destined to rescue its residents from the fearsome Jabberwocky, and thereby end the reign of the evil Red Queen (Helena Bonham-Carter).  
 
Although Alice vehemently declares that she is not the girl they are looking for, she becomes swept up in the adventure, meeting the Red Queen, her hippy-dippy-trippy sister the White Queen (Anne Hathaway), the flesh-creepingly slimy Knave (Crispin Glover) and the incredibly aptly named Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp) along the way to discovering her true fate.
 
Like rock stars and excessive amounts of leather (or Miley Cyrus and lucrative product tie-ins,) Tim Burton and Johnny Depp are inextricably linked with one another, having chalked up eight films together as director and star. Their partnership is taken to exciting new heights here, as Burton’s deft direction and slick use of three-dimensional CGI is complimented nicely by Depp’s energetically bonkers performance, which manages to outshine even his radioactive wig and eye-popping make up.
 
Unlike their past outings, however (the overblown Charlie and the Chocolate Factory springs to mind) there is more to love here than just the usual Burton/ Depp magic. The performances are vibrant without resorting to caricature, with Mia Wasikowska bringing a steely strength to her deceptively elfin-faced Alice, Helena Bonham-Carter (and her giant head) managing to cut an amusingly tragic figure, and the vocal actors – including Michael Sheen, Stephen Fry and Matt Lucas – all being stand-outs amongst the freakishly talented cast.
 
Aside from the celebrity-stuffed roster, Alice’s other “star” is undoubtedly the beautifully rendered digital world of Underland. Every frame is filled with gloriously overblown and dizzyingly coloured landscapes that are positively teeming with Underland’s colourful creatures. (Warning: be prepared to suffer excessive eye-strain after the movie, as your peepers will be frantically and continuously scanning the screen to try and take in all the meticulous detail.)
 
Verdict:
An explosion in the crazy factory, the giddy Alice in Wonderland more than justifies its hype, and proves itself to be a welcome relief from the gloomy films that have dominated the cinema of late.
 
Rebecca Lake