So, is “Alice in Wonderland” Burton’s “Hook” (for those who might wonder what I mean, Steven Spielberg’s arbitrary continuation of the Peter Pan story from 1991 was basically considered blasphemy by the cultural community and regarded as the weakest link in the star director’s career)? Well, both yes and no. It is just as unholy in its development but not as disrespectful to its source material as “Hook” was! Ironically Burton’s take on 3D gets only as deep as a pop-up book, with mainly layered 2D images giving a sense of distance. Similarly he has turned one of the deepest and most dimensional children’s stories into a shallow facade of its philosophical origin. Reduced down to one dimension only! The plot is paper thin and barely holds all the way through, the characters are the same but not as complex. Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland” lacks the desired charm and magic. Ironically those often existing in Burton’s fairy-tales, even though I’m not a big fan of them. Another thing I’m not a big fan of is Burton and Depp as a cinematic couple!
Like I’ve mentioned before Depp is to me one of the most overrated actors in modern cinema, who lacks the versatility that I praise in an actor. He often plays the same type of character no matter who he portrays (he is to play Pancho Villa in a forthcoming biopic but its not a bit hard to imagine exactly how he is going to look and behave on screen) and to make it worse he plays yet another clone of Burton’s imaginary clown (this time a cousin of Ronald McDonald’s?lol). Just compare his Willy Wonka and Mad Hatter. The strongest feature of the movie, which got me to the cinema to watch it in 3D, is its aesthetics and technical aspects. However even in those regards its failed to meet my expectations since its stylistic theme sadly features very little of the lowbrow/pop-surrealism influences that were promised in its initial trailer. Instead it has borrowed its bulk from movies like Narnia and Shrek, which deprive its latter half of any sense of wonder!
