Cinema Nova, 29/03/2010
Status: Behindski, dude
Step one, methinks, when adapting a book to the big screen is to read the fucking source material.
If screenwriter Linda Woolverton (who's written a bunch of Disney animated movies and bad TV spinoffs like “Teen Wolf” and “Ewoks”, the ill-fated 80s spin-off from Caravan of Courage which was a spin off from Return of the Jedi) had actually read either of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland or Through the Looking Glass (either one, I’m not fussy), I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t have come up with this. I think she just looked at the pictures.
At one point Alice (played with zero charisma by Australian MIA WASIKOWSKA) slaps on a suit of armour and rides an overgrown bulldog-leopard into battle against a dragon. What, as you so rightly ask, the fuck? Have movie-makers gone completely insane? First they put Queen Elizabeth in a suit of armour in Elizabeth: The Golden Age, now Alice. Next it’ll be a sword-wielding Maid Marian. Oh, hang on a minute…
I’ve got nothing against girls wieldin’ big old swords, in fact I’m quite a fan, but there’s something really done about girls proving their worth by fighting and why bland-up already subversive girl characters? Elizabeth, for example, was an enormously powerful monarch and an incredible strategist. She didn’t have to carry a sword, too. And Alice is the quintessential nonsense heroine with wit, vivacity and pluck. Where does a sword fit into that picture? Oh, that’s right: it doesn’t!
Aside from the cardinal sin of disrespecting such well-known and beloved source material, the screenplay just keeps the crap coming with muddled action, boring clichés and wasted opportunities. Sad to say there’s not much Tim Burton could have done with the mess, but he overcompensates with the visuals and ends up with a headache-inducer as muddled as the script.
All of my two stars go to HELENA BONHAM-CARTER (Fight Club, Sweeney Todd) who has never been funnier or more interesting as the massive-headed Red Queen. Plus, she never once picks up a sword.
