The Alice, played by nineteen-year-old Australian Mia Wasikowska, is really old. I hesitate to say "too old," lest I come off as some Carroll fanboy shouting, "She's way, way too old! Burton doesn't get it! Boycott!!" into the infinite void of the Internet. I will, however, say this. Isn't it kind of the point that Alice is a child? Not only is it a story about a child suddenly finding herself in a bizarre conglomeration of children's stories and fairy tales, but it seems significant that a child is the most sensible and logical person in Wonderland.
And I think the CG Garfield movie has ruined all large CG cat heads for me forever. (It's doubly unfair because I haven't even seen that movie! Just catching glipses of the trailer back when it came out was enough!) But maybe this movie will be the one that will finally cleanse my psyche of this curse, so that I won't think of an ugly CG representation in a terrible movie based on a terrible comic strip whenever I see images like this movie's depiction of the Cheshire Cat. (If you don't believe me that "Garfield" is a terrible strip, check out this—live-action re-enactments of actual "Garfield" strips, followed by even more bizarre music videos—and this—"Garfield" turned into an existentialist tragedy about Jon's pathetic life, simply by removing Garfield. Even the biggest Jim Davis apologist has to admit that those are fifty times funnier than anything he's ever produced. The old Saturday-morning Garfield cartoon, on the other hand, is one of my fondest childhood memories.)
Those rather tentative qualms aside, I'll admit I'm looking forward to this film with mild anticipation. It's got nothing on Spike Jonze's Where the Wild Things Are—which, not to build it up too much, I fully expect to have me weeping tears of joy by the end—but it does seem like the kind of project that's just up Burton's alley. In fact, I'd say that this is probably the film he was born to make. It's the perfect wedding of childlike whimsy and a very dark aesthetic and narrative sensibility; see many of his best films—Pee Wee's Big Adventure, Beetle Juice, Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare before Christmas, Ed Wood—for examples of this. This may not quite rise to those films' heights, but he's definitely in his element.
And one last thing. Although Burton and Johnny Depp are pretty much joined at the hip at this point, I think that—at least in terms of physical appearance—Burton himself would have made an even better Mad Hatter. Discuss amongst yourselves.
Although unrelated to "Alice," I just wanted to add that Garfield Minus Garfield is brilliant. That's the version that should be syndicated. Thanks for the link!
ReplyDeleteApparently the guy's published it in book form, but they should really go one better by just giving the Garfield strip's spot on the funny pages to it. All those empty panels, or panels that just have Jon staring silently, I don't know whether to laugh or cry (mostly laugh). And if you check out the other link (Lasagna Cat), make sure to watch the video for 12/03/1991 (set to Alan Jackson's Chattahoochee), it's pretty ridiculous.
ReplyDeleteNow, after having actually watched the AIW trailer, my first impression is confusion over the casting choice of Wasikowska - she seems a little too Gwen Stefani-channelling-Alice http://img153.imageshack.us/img153/3527/vlcsnap395430uz4.jpg I don't think that an immediate thought of "too old" is unfair, as I too, thought that Alice's child-ness was a pretty important element of the story. (Were Dakota Fanning and Abigail Breslin busy?) Nonetheless, I wasn't totally put off by the trailer, and I'm definitely willing to see where he's going with it. I think the key will be to go in without specific expectations, and see what Burton has up his sleeve.
ReplyDelete