Alice (Mia Wasikowska, the troubled teen on In Treatment) is a 19th-century 19-year-old, a brisk tea of dreaminess and defiance. For years, she has puzzled over nightmares that her father, an adventurer, encouraged her to learn from. Fast forward: Dad is dead and Mom wants to marry Alice off to a twitty lord, son of Dad's business partner.
While Alice considers said twit's proposal, she follows a white bunny down down down the rabbit hole to the upside-down universe of what here is called "Underland."
This implicit reference to lady parts is a motif of the Woolverton/Burton fantasia, which structures Alice's trek as a hero's journey through female archetypes. Only after tasting the rancorous rule of the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter, Burton's real-life partner) and the damsel-in-distress dithering of the White Queen, does Alice ultimately emerge a woman warrior.
What fun Burton has in visualizing the different sensibilities of the monarchs! Though his narrative, like Carroll's, follows no logical path, imagistically the film is rich and allusive. (Why is there a visual reference to Padme and Anakin Skywalker's wedding in Star Wars II? No idea.) The film, which is like most spectacles nowadays in 3-D, does not use the added dimension in any particularly innovative way. The innovation is in its visuals.
The balloon-headed Red Queen lives in a palace that resembles Sleeping Beauty's at Disneyland, only drenched in maraschino-cherry sauce. And the floss-haired White Queen resides in a spun-sugar castle resembling something Narnian. And also Oz-like, as the good and bad queens are like the good and bad witches.
