Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Alice vs. Alice
I suspect few of my readers are familiar with American McGee’s Alice, a ten-year-old video game which was in the opinion of many* an instant classic. Tim Burton’s Alice will, naturally, garner far more attention; it’s big box office, features “sexiest man alive” Johnny Depp, and has twin virtues of being an expensive special effects flick and the product of Tim Burton’s mind. But does Burton’s Alice really deserve such a disparity of focus?
Consider:
1. McGee’s Alice: badass. Burton’s Alice: nice ass.
Maybe. It’s a Disney movie, after all — we see a bit of Mia Wasikowska’s neck and that’s about it.
2. McGee’s premise: an insane Alice returns to Wonderland to regain her sanity. Burton’s premise: an inane Alice returns to Wonderland to dodge a marriage proposal from a chinless lordling.
3. McGee’s message: Guilt is a bitch. But find some way-cool weapons (such as the brutal croquet mallet, jackbombs, and the ever helpful vorpal blade) and you can slaughter physical manifestations of your guilt to your heart’s content. Burton’s message: It’s okay to be your own woman.
Yes, it’s a feminist movie, and I would have cheered the ending had not Burton (through the proxy of Johnny Depp) indulged in that cretinous dance routine.
4. McGee’s soundtrack: from Chris Vrenna — dark, moody. Unforgettable. Burton’s soundtrack: um . . . forgettable.
Okay, I’m running out of compare-and-contrast steam. Alice wasn’t a bad movie, just a disappointing one. I’m of the same mind as critic Amy Biancolli, “But its single biggest failing — an affront to Lewis Carroll and the charms of nonsense literature — is the fact that it makes sense.” Biancolli doesn’t quite get Carroll’s Alice, though. For me, the charm of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was the delightful conflict between the hallucinatory action and Alice’s proper, no-nonsense response to it. McGee captured that aspect of Alice; Burton didn’t.
There was a lot of bizarreness in the movie, but not the good kind of bizarreness. Why does the White Queen prance and mince? Why do the Mad Hatter’s eyes keep changing color? And why the strong sexual subtext between the Mad Hatter and Alice? If Burton had run with that, well, fine. Instead, he gave us bits and clues, as if an entire plot thread had been edited from the screenplay — but not completely.
Oh, one other thing: it strikes me as wrong, somehow, for any Alice-inspired story to be predictable. This movie wasn’t 100% predictable. 98%, perhaps?
I know, I know. Kvetch, kvetch, kvetch.
D.
*My son and me, to name two.
