Off With Your Head !!. Review on Alice in Wonderland - 2010 Movie

One pill makes you larger and one that makes you small

And the ones that mother gives you, don't do anything at all

Go ask Alice, when she's ten feet tall...

And you've just had some kind of mushroom and your mind is moving slow

Go ask Alice, I think she'll know...

Lewis Carroll's genius in Alice In Wonderland (AIW) is matched perhaps only by Jefferson Airplane's outstanding song White Rabbit and its singing by Grace Slick. The song ranks as one of the most befitting tributes by an artist to another. For me its hard to think about one work without thinking of the other. So it comes as a surprise that Tim Burton chose to make his version of "Alice In Wonderland" without taking the benefit of music tailormade for AIW.

Mia Wasikowska plays a 20 year old Alice who doesn’t like wearing corsettes and stockings. She is being proposed to by Hamish, a suitor with orange hair and funny set of dentals. She cant decide what to do and so she follows the White Rabbit down the ....you guessed it... the hole...into Wonderland, the place she had visited 13 years ago in her dreams. So its actually Alice Back in Wonderland rather than Alice in Wonderland. What follows is a cocktail of the book, its sequel and Burton's own inventions.

Most of the AIW regulars are there including the Mad Hatter (Depp), the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter with a 'bulbous' head); the Cheshire Cat (the voice of Stephen Fry); the White Queen (a whitened Anne Hathaway); Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum (voices by Matt Lucas); the Knave (Crispin Glover); the Hookah-Smoking Caterpillar (the voice of Alan Rickman); and last but not the least the White Rabbit (voice of Michael Sheen). Much of the storyline is an adaptation of the original characters but not necessarily the original story.

If someone is adapting a cult book like AIW, tongues are gonna wag, especially when the original itself is most widely read, including by youngsters. The biggest and most easily noticeable bungling therefore is that with the storyline. To say that it has been suitably modified to make it adult friendly would be letting off the Director (Tim Burton)/Producers too easily. Firstly, fantasy is a domain better left to children. Try introducing adults and they'll screw (quite literally too ;-)). Secondly with a literary masterpiece like AIW you need a really talented story/scriptwriters to even think of tinkering with the basics. We hardly have any outstanding authors today.

That said to be fair to Burton, 100 mins is tad short a duration to capture Alice in Wonderland in its entirety, especially when you spend the first 15 mins in getting her "down the hole". The good thing is Burton hasnt tried to be too ambitious with his storyline. So lets look at some of the things that Messrs Burton & Co. have done.

The USP of AIW is its craft with words, its preoccupation with lateral thinking, its riddles. Much of this has been retained which'll please the connoisseur. The unsolved riddle "Why is a raven like a writing desk?" is repeated quite a few times by the Hatter. The Red Queen with her classic shout "Off with his head!". Alice herself pitches in with phrases like "curious and curiouser" or the suggestion that white roses could be painted to make 'em red. The Chesire Cat grin has been highlighted too. Only wish is they could have got Nicholson to morph it. Who better than him when it comes to Chesire Cat grins. But the best of them all is when the Hatter remarks to Alice "You used to be muchier. You have Lost much of your muchness !!" Outstanding stuff really.

Performances have been on the good side mostly with Depp and Helena Carter being really good. Depp has proved over the years that he's really outstanding at historical fiction and seems to excel in characters which are offbeat. Not many could have done justice to the Hatter's character as well as him. He is mad, sharp, witty, lost and fragile, all at the same time. Helena is all pompous, short tempered, spoilt, sycophancy prone and stubborn, just what the doctor ordered. Mia in Alice's character is just about average as she just doesnt seem to carry the innocence, the childishness, the lovability or the "curiousness" that our Alice is known for. Others havent been too bad on their part.

The soundtrack itself is rather subdued and doesnt distract you from the movie, something which Moviemakers today have been increasingly guilty of doing. Wish they had spent a few bucks buying Jefferson Airplane's songs copyrights and inserted them at appropriate places. Alice is a 20 year old woman now isnt she ? Surely she'd have appreciated the gesture ;-)

They have decided to include the Mad Tea Party (I had it as a lesson in my rapid reader), only without some of its trademark exchanges (dialogues). The characters of Tweedledee and Tweedleedum & Jabberwocky have been imported from Through the Looking glass. While the Twins havent been entirely useless, the introduction of Jabberwocky for the climax has made it rather tame. The reinvented storyline is what really pulls the movie down coupled with the lack of suitable background score that should characterize a story like AIW.

Overall, a good watch, especially if you are into fantasy. Cant seem to get Jefferson Airplane out of me mind, so lemme end with a twist :-

When logic & proportion have fallen slowly dead.

And the theatrewalla is minting money and Tim Burton wants your head,

Remember what the Dormouse said - "Feed your head...Feed your head."