Watch Me: Alice in 3D

Full disclosure: I have vintage copies of Alice in Wonderland, The Annotated Alice, and a set of Alice Christmas ornaments. You get the drift.  In 9th grade, I played Alice in an experimental version based on improv, which is where Alice Central began. No doubt, Alice is a key icon of the Anglo-American lexicon. The book was first published  in 1865,  just as photography invented captured illusion on paper. The original Alice has remained so brillig, she even exists in cyber-form. See Inanimate Alice for an example. 

Up till now, "falling down the rabbit hole" had all kinds of connotations. Go ask Alice. Add to that the 3D experience of Burton's version,  which clearly drives the entertainment quotient. After a momentary "say what about the Jabberwocky?", I suspended Carroll fidelity expectations, reveling in Tim Burton's wild dialogue with the classic. In addition to the Mad Hatter's glowing green eyes, and dormouse weapon-brandishing, Alice morphs into a heroine with a Joan of Arc streak. All the "Eat Me" and "Drink Me" sequences provide a blue silk fluency of dresses and fabrics reapplied to Alice's ever-changing size.

Tim Burton's take on the classic tale is very much a new spin. How much he let Alice Liddell in on his storyline (written by Disney veteran Linda Woolverton) is up for grabs. That he produced it under the aegis of Disney holds some irony, since Mia Wasikowska's Alice bears no resemblance to the treacle-y cartoon produced by Walt back in 1951, anymore than that Alice resembled Lewis Carroll's friend. For starters, this 19-year-old Alice is a bit older than 10-year-old Alice Liddell, a clear segue into the coming of-age story.

Helena Bonham Carter, special effected into an extreme "off with their head" Red Queen, manages to steal scenes from that otherwise larger-than-lifer, Johnny Depp, as the Mad Hatter. Visual effects rule the ride with more Wonderland awe than the lackluster 50s cartoon conveyed. A surprise voice visit by Alan Rickman adds some smoke to the landscape, and the Cheshire Cat's twisting disappearing acts startle throughout.

While the black lipstick and nail polish give Anne Hathaway's White Queen a bit of quirky goth, her sisterhood of the opposition with the Red Queen yawned me a bit, especially compared to the feisty expansion of possibilities for Wasikowska's Alice, who bucks Victorian gender rules, pressure for royal marriage and dons a sword for a climactic moment. This Alice is good news for girl icons everywhere even if the humdrum bipolar battle-of-the-queens returns as the old Disney trope that women just can't get along....

The nonsense quotient in Burton's world is oddly less non-sensical than Carroll's original.  Yet this Alice more than braves the riddles and outsmarts the Red Queen, resulting in a net value to the pantheon of girl possibilities. Mia Wasikowska's feisty Alice battles the dragon herself; she doesn't stand by waiting for a rescue from St. George or The White Rabbit.