ALICE IN WONDERLAND
ALICE IN WONDERLAND
March 6 2010, Cinetopia (Vancouver, WA)
Do I have to add "3D" to the title? Isn't that part just implied? Doesn't everything with a grain of visual interest have to be these days? Man, the bandwagon jumping is happening so blindly and rapidly that I fear that someone will catch fire. Unfortunately it's not the print of this film, which means that it exists.
It is not so much that I hate the film; it is that I wish it had never been made. It was not necessary, and even if it was, nearly every part of it does not work. Why my vitriol, you may ask? Well, you know how when something you expect to be really good, something that should by any yardstick be really good, and then it's not, it's worse than if you knew it was going to be a piece of shit in the first place?
People wonder why I love bad movies. It is because they are bad - I know that going in - and whatever moments of joy and craft I can glean from them are really precious, because they are unexpected and unanticipated. With a project like ALICE, with the people involved in its creation (so many of my lifelong favorites, sure things, can't go wrongs), I confess that I expected better than this. It's craven, it's grasping, it's desperate, and it feels out of touch. The aspects of other cinematic triumphs repurposed here (and there are many) are exactly the kind of thing that I got tired of even as I watched the originals; to see these same moments here, filtered through Tim Burton's patented visually-striking, goth-twee-melancholy-twisted veil, isn't just shitty - it's depressing.
Yes, I saw THE RETURN OF THE KING. The battle scenes in it bored the shit out of me because I'd seen them done better in THE TWO TOWERS, and done in a more striking, concise, effective way. 5 minutes of battle on screen trumps 18, any day. I'm sorry; it just does. And that battle? It's the exact same shots, run through the mill over and over again almost without variance, like a bad porno. (See also: THE LION, THE WITCH, AND THE WARDROBE; THE GOLDEN COMPASS; HELLBOY 2) What are they doing in ALICE IN WONDERLAND? Why do we have to have a battlefield sequence, anyway? (Answer: because marketing has told them that boys need something to keep them interested in the movie.)
I love Johnny Depp. And I love the Mad Hatter. Lewis Carroll's Mad Hatter. I almost liked "Hatta" (yeah really), ALICE's new, much more sympathetic version; he looks awesome, he has a couple of worthy lines of dialogue (probably ad-libbed, if I know my Johnny) and hell, he's played by Johnny Depp! But I couldn't quite get with it. Because he has to go on a journey of personal discovery; because he has to come to terms with the fact that he's mentally ill; because he has to have romantic chemistry with Alice. WHY, for fuck's sake? What's that doing there? Why is that element necessary to add to this story?
Well, Alice herself, as played by Mia Wasikowska, is a dewy, frowny-faced, blonde buttercup of a babe; she looks runway-fantastic in her ever-evolving series of filmy gowns, and she seems intelligent enough. Well, sorta. Alice is now 19, her visit to the realms beyond the looking-glass were real, and she goes back there now for NO GOOD REASON - well, so that she can gain a very modern you-go-girl self-confidence so that she can avoid getting married to upper-class twit Hamish. Because hey, it's the late 19th Century; turning your back on an arranged marriage and telling off the wealthy family you were about to get yourself into is going to work out JUST GREAT. Yeah, have fun with your independence when you are socially ostracized. I can see her having a good adventure or two, then marrying some handsome Englishman with property in India, and giving birth to the neglected, neurotic, ferociously spoiled child at the center of The Secret Garden.
Also wasted? Crispin Glover (who I didn't even know was in this movie until his name popped up in the opening credits). He's easily the best thing about the film, and he doesn't have all that much to do, really, as the Knave of Hearts. Mostly he's enormously tall and thin (an admittedly great visual effect that comes straight out of Tenniel's pen), and slavishly - submissively - devoted to the giant-craniumed Red Queen. The Knave has a really cool scar on his face and he implies a very kinky dedication to the Queen's desires. Which, of course, because it's this movie, is later revealed to all be a sham, because no guy would ever want a shrieking supervillain like the Queen.
Oh, and let's explore the Red Queen. Another part of the movie that really works well - the visual effect of the Queen's enormous head is well-done, though with everything else on screen being so weird, it just kind of fits in. Helena Bonham Carter seems to have a relationship with Tim Burton that's similar to Mia Farrow's with Woody Allen; they fall in love, they partner up, they keep working together, and he increasingly casts her as a repulsive, insane antagonist to all that is good and smart and lovable. I don't know why that weirds me out, but it really does. Anyway, HBC is good, as always, although it doesn't help - and in fact really yanked me out of the movie multiple times, usually because of the hints of twisted sexual power in the Queen and the Knave's relationship. It's simply too adult to belong in such a soft-headed children's film (dark or no) and again, it just doesn't belong there. It's not that I have a problem with grownup humor in a kids' movie; it's just really uncomfortably wrong here. Sex jokes, yeah; D/s kink humiliation jokes, no, please, god, no. There's a time and place. (See also: BEETLEJUICE, which gets smutty humor right.)
I guess the voice talent isn't really wasted, even though the dialogue they have to impart is generally dreadful, saddled with shitty puns and clumsy allusion that brings heartache (or at least heartburn) to any reader of Lewis Carroll. (Not everybody can write like that, people; don't fucking try it. Linda Woolverton, you are on notice.) More favorites - Alan Rickman, Stephen Fry, Timothy Spall, Michael Sheen, Imelda Staunton. It doesn't really matter. It doesn't add anything to have the caterpillar with Rickman's voice. The caterpillar is boring. Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum - voice by Matt Lucas - are boring. Oh and... this gets its own complaint section ...
The Jabberwock. Y. They renamed a beast. It is called the Jabberwock. As in "Thou hast slain the Jabberwock, my son!" For some reason they decided that it should be called The Jabberwocky. Because they fucking hate me. I wanted to throw a brick through the screen by that point. It's the climax of the film - Alice must defeat the (Oh, I can't even say it...) Big J to save the day (HOW/WHY EXACTLY is not really explained, at least not in a way that I can remember, which = fail) - and the big scary illustration-come-to-life is voiced by Christopher Lee, not that I could tell. Cue battle sequence.
To add to the soul-discomfort of this experience is added the fact that the 3D glasses one uses to view this are polarized - and thus cut out some of the light getting into your eyes. In other words, they are sunglasses. Tinted. Darkening an already visually dark movie. And the 3D is not particularly good or striking; it was done post-production with a digital process, and I could tell. It gave me eyestrain and a headache. And I was fine at AVATAR, even if that movie made me mad a lot too - but at least I could see it, and it was pretty.
Not just disappointing; depressing. I guess if it wasn't based on anything, I'd feel better about it, but it is. It's based on one of the world's most famous and beloved books. And it's as clumsy as a one-eyed, cracked-out orangutan in a china shop.
March 6 2010, Cinetopia (Vancouver, WA)
Do I have to add "3D" to the title? Isn't that part just implied? Doesn't everything with a grain of visual interest have to be these days? Man, the bandwagon jumping is happening so blindly and rapidly that I fear that someone will catch fire. Unfortunately it's not the print of this film, which means that it exists.
It is not so much that I hate the film; it is that I wish it had never been made. It was not necessary, and even if it was, nearly every part of it does not work. Why my vitriol, you may ask? Well, you know how when something you expect to be really good, something that should by any yardstick be really good, and then it's not, it's worse than if you knew it was going to be a piece of shit in the first place?
People wonder why I love bad movies. It is because they are bad - I know that going in - and whatever moments of joy and craft I can glean from them are really precious, because they are unexpected and unanticipated. With a project like ALICE, with the people involved in its creation (so many of my lifelong favorites, sure things, can't go wrongs), I confess that I expected better than this. It's craven, it's grasping, it's desperate, and it feels out of touch. The aspects of other cinematic triumphs repurposed here (and there are many) are exactly the kind of thing that I got tired of even as I watched the originals; to see these same moments here, filtered through Tim Burton's patented visually-striking, goth-twee-melancholy-twisted veil, isn't just shitty - it's depressing.
Yes, I saw THE RETURN OF THE KING. The battle scenes in it bored the shit out of me because I'd seen them done better in THE TWO TOWERS, and done in a more striking, concise, effective way. 5 minutes of battle on screen trumps 18, any day. I'm sorry; it just does. And that battle? It's the exact same shots, run through the mill over and over again almost without variance, like a bad porno. (See also: THE LION, THE WITCH, AND THE WARDROBE; THE GOLDEN COMPASS; HELLBOY 2) What are they doing in ALICE IN WONDERLAND? Why do we have to have a battlefield sequence, anyway? (Answer: because marketing has told them that boys need something to keep them interested in the movie.)
I love Johnny Depp. And I love the Mad Hatter. Lewis Carroll's Mad Hatter. I almost liked "Hatta" (yeah really), ALICE's new, much more sympathetic version; he looks awesome, he has a couple of worthy lines of dialogue (probably ad-libbed, if I know my Johnny) and hell, he's played by Johnny Depp! But I couldn't quite get with it. Because he has to go on a journey of personal discovery; because he has to come to terms with the fact that he's mentally ill; because he has to have romantic chemistry with Alice. WHY, for fuck's sake? What's that doing there? Why is that element necessary to add to this story?
Well, Alice herself, as played by Mia Wasikowska, is a dewy, frowny-faced, blonde buttercup of a babe; she looks runway-fantastic in her ever-evolving series of filmy gowns, and she seems intelligent enough. Well, sorta. Alice is now 19, her visit to the realms beyond the looking-glass were real, and she goes back there now for NO GOOD REASON - well, so that she can gain a very modern you-go-girl self-confidence so that she can avoid getting married to upper-class twit Hamish. Because hey, it's the late 19th Century; turning your back on an arranged marriage and telling off the wealthy family you were about to get yourself into is going to work out JUST GREAT. Yeah, have fun with your independence when you are socially ostracized. I can see her having a good adventure or two, then marrying some handsome Englishman with property in India, and giving birth to the neglected, neurotic, ferociously spoiled child at the center of The Secret Garden.
Also wasted? Crispin Glover (who I didn't even know was in this movie until his name popped up in the opening credits). He's easily the best thing about the film, and he doesn't have all that much to do, really, as the Knave of Hearts. Mostly he's enormously tall and thin (an admittedly great visual effect that comes straight out of Tenniel's pen), and slavishly - submissively - devoted to the giant-craniumed Red Queen. The Knave has a really cool scar on his face and he implies a very kinky dedication to the Queen's desires. Which, of course, because it's this movie, is later revealed to all be a sham, because no guy would ever want a shrieking supervillain like the Queen.
Oh, and let's explore the Red Queen. Another part of the movie that really works well - the visual effect of the Queen's enormous head is well-done, though with everything else on screen being so weird, it just kind of fits in. Helena Bonham Carter seems to have a relationship with Tim Burton that's similar to Mia Farrow's with Woody Allen; they fall in love, they partner up, they keep working together, and he increasingly casts her as a repulsive, insane antagonist to all that is good and smart and lovable. I don't know why that weirds me out, but it really does. Anyway, HBC is good, as always, although it doesn't help - and in fact really yanked me out of the movie multiple times, usually because of the hints of twisted sexual power in the Queen and the Knave's relationship. It's simply too adult to belong in such a soft-headed children's film (dark or no) and again, it just doesn't belong there. It's not that I have a problem with grownup humor in a kids' movie; it's just really uncomfortably wrong here. Sex jokes, yeah; D/s kink humiliation jokes, no, please, god, no. There's a time and place. (See also: BEETLEJUICE, which gets smutty humor right.)
I guess the voice talent isn't really wasted, even though the dialogue they have to impart is generally dreadful, saddled with shitty puns and clumsy allusion that brings heartache (or at least heartburn) to any reader of Lewis Carroll. (Not everybody can write like that, people; don't fucking try it. Linda Woolverton, you are on notice.) More favorites - Alan Rickman, Stephen Fry, Timothy Spall, Michael Sheen, Imelda Staunton. It doesn't really matter. It doesn't add anything to have the caterpillar with Rickman's voice. The caterpillar is boring. Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum - voice by Matt Lucas - are boring. Oh and... this gets its own complaint section ...
The Jabberwock. Y. They renamed a beast. It is called the Jabberwock. As in "Thou hast slain the Jabberwock, my son!" For some reason they decided that it should be called The Jabberwocky. Because they fucking hate me. I wanted to throw a brick through the screen by that point. It's the climax of the film - Alice must defeat the (Oh, I can't even say it...) Big J to save the day (HOW/WHY EXACTLY is not really explained, at least not in a way that I can remember, which = fail) - and the big scary illustration-come-to-life is voiced by Christopher Lee, not that I could tell. Cue battle sequence.
To add to the soul-discomfort of this experience is added the fact that the 3D glasses one uses to view this are polarized - and thus cut out some of the light getting into your eyes. In other words, they are sunglasses. Tinted. Darkening an already visually dark movie. And the 3D is not particularly good or striking; it was done post-production with a digital process, and I could tell. It gave me eyestrain and a headache. And I was fine at AVATAR, even if that movie made me mad a lot too - but at least I could see it, and it was pretty.
Not just disappointing; depressing. I guess if it wasn't based on anything, I'd feel better about it, but it is. It's based on one of the world's most famous and beloved books. And it's as clumsy as a one-eyed, cracked-out orangutan in a china shop.