Alice in Wonderland is one of those books that I've always read. Most books I can remember a time when I had not read it, and remember encountering it for the first time. for Alice in Wonderland, I can't. Presumably this means I read it at a very young age, or I have selectively blanked the memory, possibly due to some kind of traumatic experience (I dunno, maybe it gave me a papercut or something), or maybe it just is not remembered with no greater significance or sense, a fact that sits rather well with the nature of the text itself.
Allow me to elaborate.
I do remember not reading 'real' books until quite late, instead focussing on younger texts and stories. My teachers were concerned that this showed a lack of intelligence or learning and eagerly tried to press older texts upon me, and felt sadly their suspicions confirmed when I showed little interest in them. What they failed to work out is that I was not reading the books for 'young readers' they offered me not because I was unable to understand them, but because they were poorly written, with plots that simply didn't interest me. Why would I want to read about a 10 year old girl going snowboarding when I could read about giants and dragons? Now that I'm older, I still ask myself the same question.
But I eventually stumbled accross a Terry Pratchett book (thanks to my stepmother) and read it in about two days. After that, I always had a book with me, and that's never changed. It was an englightening experience to discover that there were fantastic stories outside of the childrens books, and that I didn't have to read texts that bored me simply because people my age group were meant to read them.
In any case, at some point, I read Alice in Wonderland. Overall it amused me, and featured many inconic moments and characters that have entered into popular culture and usage. Everyone knows the Mad Hatter, and everyone knows about rabbits in waistcoats being late for things (It is unsure at this point whether the waistcoat contributed to its lateness). Which begs the question, if a text is so memorable and so well known, why on Earth would you mess with it?
Which brings me to the recent Alice in Wonderland film by Tim Burton.
I have a soft spot for Tim Burton films (or at least, up until 5 years ago I did) as he frequently includes for want of a better word a type of pleasant surrealism in his films that I find quite appealing. Many times throughout each of his films the strange, the fantastic, the peculiar will occur, not to unsettle or frighten but rather to add a sense of awe or wonder to the proceedings. Or at least, that used to be the case, but the more recent of Burtons films have moved from the charmingly bizarre, to the ocassionally amusing but mostly just kind of strange. In some ways, rather than a story with weird visuals in it, the films now seem to be weird visuals with a story in it.
Alice in Wonderland is no exception. Rather than a straight up film adaptation of the novel, it is instead set as a sequel, except due to a rather unfortunate desire to create a sequel but still include all the iconic moments from the book, it manages to feel rather familiar. The visual effects are a treat to behold, but I'd recommend not watching the film in 3d as even at the short running length my eyes were left quite sore at the end (Avatar on the other hand ran for about three hours and my eyes were fine throughout. The headache I got from THAT film was in no way due to the 3d technology.)
Similiar to other recent adaptations like the Lord of the Rings and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the film features a cast of excellent performers, and also similiar to those films their behaviour in no way resembles the original characters. Some the minor characters sound ok but Stephen Fry as the Chesire Cat loses the manic joy and replaces it with a solemn (or perhaps bored) air, a surprise as he's more than capable of insanity, and Johnny Depp perhaps misdefined 'Mad' and thought rather than crazy it meant angry, as he spends a lot of the film wandering around in what appears to be a barely controlled rage, before ocassionally remembering he's meant to be crazy.
All in all it results in a film that manages to feel both entirely too familiar and yet wildly different, culminated in an out of left field final battle that feels thrown in because they felt they needed some kind of big finish.
If you want pretty visuals, go right ahead and see Alice in Wonderland. But beyond that, I can find little to recommend. If you're after a proper sequel to Alice in Wonderland, read the actual sequel, and then play American McGee's Alice, which takes Wonderland to some dark places and actually manages to make it feel new.
Rating 2 out of 6. (1 out of 6 in 3D)
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