Well, 58 years later, an imaginative and wild director, Tim Burton (“The Corpse Bride,” “Sweeney Todd”) brings the classic back to life with new directing techniques and technology for today’s generation.
This live action, CGI-laden rendition of the story presents a new Alice. Instead of a little girl, Alice is now portrayed as an estranged 19-year-old in the Victorian era, and like a regular teen, she is defiant As with most of Tim Burton’s films, there is a gothic influence to his art direction.
While this may turn off most people, I can assure you that it’s not depressing or gloomy as Burton’s previous works like “The Corpse Bride” or “Batman.” The film is visually stunning (and we all had our fair share of movies with a ton of CGI, like “Avatar”) but unlike other CGI-heavy movies, the film is not shooting for realism. It’s a kid’s movie, so art design is cartoony and colorful. The environments are very detailed; they usually do a great job in capturing the overall mood. Burton did a great job in combining the animation with the live-action scenes; they’re seamless and it’s real fun to watch.
But with the technical stuff aside, let’s focus on the movie. Like in Disney’s animated take on “Alice in Wonderland,” Alice follows a rabbit and tumbles down into a hole that leads into Wonderland. All the core characters are kept and they’re all upgraded with more prominent roles. I found it to be neat because in the animated counterpart, there were no emotional connections with the bizarre characters of Wonderland, all of them were just there to goof around with Alice. In Burton’s rendition, there’s an actual story line; Alice is no longer wandering through Wonderland meeting characters at random. In fact, this is Alice’s second visit and she has a prophecy to fulfill (although she is unaware).
Although the whole prophecy addition was clichéd, I thought the movie was fun and really entertaining; there are funny and witty moments with Johnny Depp’s take on the Mad Hatter. The real highlight though, is the scenery; the art designers did a great job in creating Wonderland, it’s like they merged “Avatar,” with other fantasy movies like “Chronicles of Narnia” and “Lord of the Rings.” There are only a handful of things that seemed out of place; I keep thinking this is a kid’s movie, and yet I see severed heads. And while Johnny Depp is a great actor, the Mad Hatter had some moments where he acted or sounded like Jack Sparrow or Sweeney Todd. All in all, the movie is a visual treat, it’s not the animated Disney film, and it may not have the same lasting appeal, but it does well as a coming-of-age film.
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