Tim Burton Is Getting Curiouser And Curiouser

It wasn’t until I was seven or eight that I realized “Alice in Wonderland” was actually a book and not purely a figment of Walt Disney’s expansive imagination. It wasn’t until I was twelve that I actually read the book and was introduced to the work of an imagination even more expansive than Disney’s. Today, Lewis Carroll’s eccentric masterpiece in the hands of Tim Burton, perhaps Hollywood’s most eccentric director. I was expecting something explosive.
Explosive, was what my dad and sister dubbed “Alice in Wonderland” after seeing it in the theater, equipped with surround sound and 3D glasses. Disjointed flashiness was what came across to me, watching the DVD on the small screen. Burton had upped the funky factor to keep up with the times. The Hatter is madder, the violence is gorier, and Wonderland is all the more wacky. Alice (Mia Wasikowska) is all grown up and on the brink of betrothal to a prudish twit of a man named Hamish. Confused and claustrophobic in the high-society world of etiquette and corsets, she decides to pop down the old rabbit hole once again.
And we find ourselves back in Wonderland, or Underland as it is now called. The strange and fantastic creatures who make Underland their home are every bit as repellent as John Tenniel’s original illustrations hashed them out to be. The Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp), with flaming orange hair, neon eyes and wonky teeth is like something out of a toddler’s nightmare. It is a role that only Johnny Depp could play with any degree of solemnity.
Burton’s “Wonderland” is not child’s play. When a younger Alice visited it so many years ago, she went to escape into the world of childhood, where her imagination could run wild without fear of scornful glances from her oppressive Victorian family. But with the grotesquely big-headed Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter) wreaking havoc on Alice’s beloved Underland, she is forced into making choices for herself- something she was rarely allowed to do in the “real world.”
Interpreting “Alice in Wonderland,” Burton could have bordered on surrealism without being accused of lunacy. Instead, he uses the plot as an excuse for a virtual fireworks show of psychedelic special effects. In a setting where logic is turned upside down, non sequitur plot twists would seemingly be right at home. But the audience is left standing at the altar as Burton darts off after every opportunity to dazzle visually. He attempts to create something internally dark, yet bursting with color and winds up with a whimsically nauseating hallucination.
To maintain a limber imagination in the starched bourgeois biosphere she lives in, Alice likes to imagine six impossible things before breakfast. Unfortunately for her, Wonder (or Under) land proves that not only is the impossible possible, it’s menacing. But Alice is not afraid, because she is convinced that it’s all just a dream. We do not fear for our golden-haired heroine for the simple fact that we do not care. We keep watching the movie because it hypnotizes us, not because it absorbs us. Even Wonderland loses its wonder when dipped in too much eye candy. Wake up Burton, it’s breakfast time.