Tim Burton's "Alice In Wonderland"

I went with several other DMTC folks to see Tim Burton's "Alice In Wonderland" this evening.

During the previews, I realized something was terribly wrong with the movie-going experience these days. The previews for several movies ("The Karate Kid"; "Prince Of Persia", etc.) - every single preview - involved variations of the same theme: a medieval-like setting wherein the Young Prince, either through discipline or accident or design, must complete a quest, or defeat enemies. This theme has always been a staple of movies, comic books, and novels, of course, but never more so than these days. (Why is that? Has the health care debate made everyone feel they they need superpowers to make it till bedtime? Are we that helpless?)

Anyway, Hollywood has apparently decided that they will cease making movies about any other topic. If it doesn't involve a Prince and a Quest in a Magical Kingdom the movie won't get made. This is an extreme decision, of course, but that's the kind of decision Hollywood likes to make.

Hollywood has done this sort of thing before, of course. In the late 50's and early 60's, Westerns were King. If it wasn't a Western, it didn't get made. Science fiction series like "Star Trek" barely made it on air, and only by consciously imitating Westerns.

The reaction was fierce too. Once toxic concentrations of Westerns were reached, audiences rebelled. By the late 70's, Westerns were gone, gone, gone; rarely to return. And that's too bad too, because the Old West was the setting for all kinds of riveting stories, almost none of which have yet been committed to celluloid. If we're not careful, the same thing will happen to the Young Prince On A Quest. Harry Potter, in permanent exile, along with the Karate Kid, and the Prince of Persia.

Anyway, I can't believe they shoehorned "Alice In Wonderland" into the same trite story pigeonhole. Except that it is Alice who is the Warrior Princess of Wonderland:

Alice, an unpretentious and individual 19-year-old, is betrothed to a dunce of an English nobleman. At her engagement party, she escapes the crowd to consider whether to go through with the marriage and falls down a hole in the garden after spotting an unusual rabbit. Arriving in a strange and surreal place called "Underland," she finds herself in a world that resembles the nightmares she had as a child, filled with talking animals, villainous queens and knights, and frumious bandersnatches. Alice realizes that she is there for a reason--to conquer the horrific Jabberwocky and restore the rightful queen to her throne.

It doesn't work. There are warrior elements in Lewis Carroll's stories, of course, but there is also a curious weightlessness in the stories appropriate for fantasy. For example, answer the question, 'Who killed the Jabberwock?,' Answer: The Beamish Boy! Certainly not Alice.

A very pretty movie, and well-acted, but with the suspect storyline, as mentioned. Johnny Depp is great as the Mad Hatter, as is Helen Bonham Carter as the Red Queen.

OK, since we will now have only one storyline permitted henceforth and forevermore in Hollywood, we have to change "Greenberg" so it's storyline fits into the pigeonhole too:

Court page Florence (Greta Gerwig) is required to play host to Sir Greenberg (Ben Stiller), who has wrestled with demons ever since he balked at accepting a court jestership 15 years before, but through mystical visions at the swimming pool and in the veterinarian's office, her true identity as the Warrior Princess of Lala-Land is finally revealed - and her Quest: slay the demons in Greenberg's head, and finally win self-worth in the process.

God, that's just dreadful! They couldn't pay me to see that movie! This new mandate to make everything like 'Harry Potter' has to be changed! I'm going to write my Congressman!

(Via Rotten Tomatoes) This reviewer wasn't impressed with "Alice in Wonderland" either:

It's all very well to have Alice be a strong-willed woman, even a budding feminist. But to launch her on her own as fiercely (and capitalistically, as she sails off in the name of imperial trade) as she is here is an anachronistic pipe-dream that even the Blue Caterpillar—lounging about as a Yoda figure for Alice—couldn't puff up from his hookah.

The Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp), slipping into Scottish brogue on occasion, ends up as a companion-in-arms, presumably because Depp should have more screen time. The Dormouse isn't sleepy but a swashbuckling female mouse-keteer, and it turns out, according to a scroll out of Epics Anonymous, that Alice is the knight who must slay the Jabberwocky. That fight finale at least hits some dizzying heights of drama.

Comedy and charming daffiness, though, are sorely lacking. It's mostly ashen doom and gloom, as when a Lilliputian-sized Alice travels to the Red Queen's huge castle, Wonderland being in the grip of firegrate-grey weather ever since Red (Helena Bonham Carter, pleasantly despotic at times) took over the land. (The Red Queen's made the same as the Queen of Hearts, though her malice shrillingly outshines the White Queen, who glides glacially along in a banal counter-realm of blank goodness.) The entrancing absurdity, wit and sunny nonsense in Carroll's episodic books are clouded over for a plot that becomes jerkily predictable on its Lord of the Rings route.