Alice in Underwhelmed

This weekend we finally got to see the much hyped, unnecessarily controversial Tim Burton reworking of Alice In Wonderland. In 3D, no less. I went in to the theatre not knowing what to expect, but came out with an overwhelming feeling of ... meh.

That's not to say it's a bad film. It's watchable and better than much of the dross being churned out these days, but didn't fill me with any sense of wonder. Indeed, one of the most grating parts was the crowbarring of the name "Underland" into it with clumsy dialogue.

The plot, such as it is, hangs by a thread and feels like a bolted on addition as an excuse to present Burton's version of the characters. It all seems to revolve around Alice being "foretold" to kill the Jabberwock and free Underland from the grip of the red queen. Great, a prophesy movie with obligatory reluctant hero.

The thing about this film, aside from the paper thin plot devices and characters with barely a single dimension, is that (if I dare say this about a Burton film) none of it feels remotely original.

Here are a list of the things that made me go "wha...?"

• Alice's would-be husband is the spitting image ofLord Victor Quartermaine from Curse Of The Wererabbit
• The tree/rabbithole were clearly a nod to the tree-full-of-heads in Sleepy Hollow (forgivable as it's his own film)
• The first view of Wonderland after escaping the tiny door resembles the outside of the labyrinth in, um, Labyrinth
• The red queen is a large-headed doppelgänger of Queenie from Blackadder
• Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum, voiced by Matt Lucas, also bore an uncanny resemblance to the comic actor. There was no believability to the characters. I could only see the actor.
• The end of the battle with Jabberwock looked uncannily like the end of Gandalf's fight with the Balrog in Two Towers. I half expected Alice proclaim to have "smote his ruin on the mountainside"

One or two little things might be brushed aside as coincidence, but all these (and more) make it feel like a deliberate cop out. A pandering to the types of audience who thrive on pop culture references and rehashed tropes.

There are other niggles. Alan Rickman's lacklustre performance, the peculiar use of "vorpal" as a proper noun rather than nonsensical adjective, the inexplicable, unnecessarily cringe inducing dance routine. The fact that the whole thing being so trivially resolved made the "battle" for Underland feel more like bickering sisters. Because that's exactly what it was.

Part of me hopes that this film is a cynical exercise in media manipulation. An attempt to prove that a well regarded director can churn out any old crap and get the hype regardless. Part of me has a sinking feeling that this is not the case.

In the interest of fairness, I will admit that I was somewhat distracted from the film by the headache inducing problems with the 3D projection. Normally, slight ghosting from the projector is barely noticable, but when used in stereoscopic 3D it completely obliterates part of the picture.

I will watch the film again on DVD (the kids will want to anyway) and hopefully be able to get a bit more "sucked in" to it. Time will tell.