Alice in Wonderland

Can the pairing of a director and actor to a film be almost too perfect? Because Tim Burton is clearly the perfect man to direct a 3-D live-action version of Alice in Wonderland. And Johnny Depp, his partner in all things both innocent and grotesque, is the perfect man to play the Mad Hatter. So why was I left feeling so strangely ambivalent about the whole affair?

It certainly can’t be the visuals, which are as dazzling as you’d expect from Burton: Depp’s fright-wig-red hair and intricately painted white eye lashes pop from under his giant velvet hat; the Red Queen’s bulbous head, with its cupie-doll lips, is perched with comic perilousness on her tiny body; the White Queen (Anne Hathaway) is shimmeringly white except for a shock of garish red lipstick.

And it can’t be the performances, which feature voicework by the entire adult cast of Harry Potter (okay, it only seems that way); plus likable newcomer Mia Wasikowska as a more mature Alice (she’s 19 in the film); a miraculously restrained Crispin Glover as the Knave of Hearts; and the terminally under-appreciated Helena Bonham Carter (also Burton’s wife) as the aforementioned bratty Red Queen.

What’s missing, I suppose, is the heady rush of inspiration—it’s almost as if Burton knows that he can crank out this kind of eye-popping concotion in his sleep. He and his company never really cut loose. Depp’s Mad Hatter, for example, is less mad than charmingly dotty. (This is actually a bit of a welcome relief after his unappetizing turn as Willy Wonka.) Alice’s shape-shifting act, so disconcerting in the book, is more silly than terrifying. Even the score, by—who else?—Danny Elfman, has a been-there/hummed-it-already feel to it.

Perhaps what Burton and Depp need to do is go out on a limb and tackle some material that doesn’t seem so perfectly suited to them. It’s been a while since they partnered for the black and white biopic Ed Wood. That was unexpected—and great. Maybe it’s time, just briefly, that they stepped away from Wonderland.

To read my complete Alice in Wonderland review, check out the April issue of Baltimore.