Smiling Cats

‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ has always been a favorite of mine. For me it’s the subtle insanity of the characters. Other than the Queen of Hearts they are relatively harmless, and can even be a little charming, but they are all stark raving mad. And that characteristic brings a slightly creepy, unsettling tone to everything. There are a lot of other books or movies that also involve insane characters, but for me it’s the characters of Wonderland that pull it off the most convincingly.

I saw the new Alice this weekend with my parents who came into town to visit. At times the movie caught the feeling of the original two novels brilliantly, but ultimately it fell flat. There were a few areas in particular that diminished the experience. First it felt too commercialized. I saw it in 2D and there were certain elements that you could tell were only put in the way they were put in to enhance the 3D experience. That was annoying. And I don’t think Alice should try to be marketable to everyone. We all have opinions about what we consider to be great art, although I do tend to think the most magnificent art is universally appreciated. But by trying to market to everyone, chances are the art is going to be lukewarm. And for me that’s what happened here. The best art was made by someone who is likely doing not for anyone else and doesn’t care what anyone else thinks it should look or sound like. Some people will love it others will hate it, and occasionally it will be so terrific that no one cannot be amazed and heightened by it. This was just not the case here. I didn’t expect it to be, the books weren’t either, even for a big fan like me, but it very easily could have been much much more. The plot was one that could be perfectly mapped to a video game. And the cast of characters was too well known. Had the characters been unknown it would have made their insanity a little more convincing and we wouldn’t have gone in with any expectations about how they were going to act. Going back to the plot, it was the same basic formula we’ve seen too many times and was very predictable. But this isn’t always bad. For example, in Super Mario Brothers the plot never changes. Princess Peach gets kidnapped by Bowser and Mario and Luigi rush to save her. But no one cares because what makes the game is the art direction and game play which is so classic most everyone is perfectly content playing the same thing time and time again with a fresh coat of paint. So while the plot couldn’t be more derivative, so long as Wonderland and its inhabitants were amazing no one would care.

But unfortunately, Wonderland wasn’t too wonderful and the inhabitants were limited because of the plot. Much of Alice relied on the original Disney animation. So many elements of the movie were more about nostalgia than about introducing unseen elements of the world. It would have been nice to see a smattering of the old elements complimenting newer aspects but instead all we got was old elements. And now that I think about it, the voices were just off. The Chesire Cat and the Mad Hatter in particular had those fantastic voices in the animation. Both were voiced by probably the most famous cartoon vocalists of all time, next to Mel Blanc from the Looney Tunes. The Cat had Sterling Holloway (voice of Winnie the Poo), and the Hatter had Ed Wynn (the laughing guy from Mary Poppins). But now the Chesire Cat sounded much too sensible and classy. For me only the caterpillar and maybe Humpty Dumpty are supposed to sound refined and elegant. They are the learned inhabitants, but of course they must still be completely mad. In this new movie the caterpillar was not only sane he was also the voice of reason.

And the inclusion of this particular plot forced the inhabitants to be less mad and random. They had to be working towards a common goal. For example, the Mad Hatter was rather unmad for most the movie. This was saddening because on the few occasions when the characters could just be themselves the movie delivered on all levels. The March Hare and Mad Hatter were brilliant for the first 30 seconds of our meeting them again. Although those 30 seconds did borrow heavily from the cartoon. And the Queen of Hearts was pretty much always spot on, but the scene of the stolen tarts and her introductory meeting with Alice were so fantastic that those two scenes alone for me were probably worth the price of the ticket. There we saw the Wonderland we grew up with, completely insane, impossible, and just a little creepy. Carol would probably have been very happy. Those two scenes could have been right out of his writings.