‘Alice in Wonderland’ a forgettable trip down the rabbit hole

“Alice in Wonderland”

Starring: Johnny Depp, Mia Wasikowska, Helena Bonham… “Alice in Wonderland”

Starring: Johnny Depp, Mia Wasikowska, Helena Bonham Carter

Director: Tim Burton

Walt Disney Pictures

Grade: B-

Going into the Tim Burton’s highly anticipated film adaptation of Lewis Carrol’s perennial classic, I was hoping to delve into a world where, as the Cheshire Cat assures Alice, everyone is mad.

What I got, however, was a visual feast that, while providing a solid hour-and-a-half of entertainment, only illustrated Burton skating on the madness that “Alice in Wonderland” lends itself to, but never really diving into and embracing the absurdity of the material.

The film begins with Alice as a now-grown young woman, suffocating under the constraints of rigid Victorian life. While Alice is at a stuffy engagement party — her own — the White Rabbit shows up, and the film quickly plunges down the rabbit hole with Alice, literally and metaphorically.

Upon entering Underland, Alice finds that she remembers the place, but only in the vague sense of the dream. It doesn’t really make much sense — nor does the fact the creatures continually refer to her as the “wrong Alice.” Is it a symptom of the creature’s madness that they can’t recognize her? Is it their memory so short-term that they can’t recognize that iconic blond hair, blue dress and blithely naïve expression?

Leave it to the Mad Hatter to recognize Alice as the destined champion of Wonderland, or Underland, to take down the tyrannical Red Queen and her Jabberwock. Oh, and the battle has to take place on Frabjous Day, seemingly for the sole purpose of Johnny Depp being able to dance a jig.

Stripping the plot and aura of “Alice in Wonderland” of its magical Carroll touch is to do an injustice to the material, as one of the work’s primary reasons for existence is to serve as a surreal and ingeniously constructed escape from reality.

Tim Burton succeeds in doing the material justice to an extent. The creatures are wonderfully weird, the landscapes are intriguing and he gives the film a subtle gray filter, giving off the appearance of a Wonderland that has had an atom bomb dropped on it. But there are scenes, especially those in the Red Queen’s (Helena Bonham Carter) castle that probe the audience to wonder how much further Burton could have taken the more fantastical elements of such a fantastic story.

The film picks and chooses among various elements from both “Alice in Wonderland” and its sequel, “Through the Looking-Glass,” and while everything meshes nicely, something feels strangely off by the time the final Narnia-esque battle comes around.

I can’t express my concern more clearly than this quote from Entertainment Weekly critic Owen Gleiberman’s review of the film: “The challenge of adapting Alice in Wonderland is this: How do you create relationships, a story, a purpose out of a tale whose prime purpose is not to have one?

Though the sum of the movie’s parts is off-putting and a little disappointing, it doesn’t detract from the wonderful aspects of the film. Depp’s performance is expectedly, delightfully weird, and Bonham Carter prevents the oft-repeated “Off with his head” from becoming annoying — no small task, indeed.

The film’s 3-D effects are used much in the same vein as “Avatar” — there are no places in the film that appear to use 3-D as a gimmick, but rather, it merely serves to provide a depth and realism to a setting that should look like the opposite.

Unfortunately, all of the film’s positive aspects can’t overcome it’s fundamental flaws, and in the end, you’ll leave Wonderland in a manner almost exactly like Alice — you’ll be thankful for the journey and have a hazy memory of the details of your time there.

Unlike the curious heroine, however, you will leave largely unchanged.