The Looking Glass

Off for a sneak preview of Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland -- the 3D Imax edition.


This isn't really cinema at all, in any meaningful sense: it is cine-spectacle (and not just because you have to wear those unflattering 3D goggles).


The 3D effect here is ok, if utterly "artificial" in feeling -- it has a sort of metallic-y feel to it, as if each element has been overburnished and now shines in a weird way.


The story is the one you know probably off by heart, and Burton does little with it other than go through the motions. For him, it's all about the style.


And the style of many -- but by no means all -- of the characters is delightful. The Tweedles deserve their own movie, Alan Rickman's gorgeous voice makes the blue caterpillar utterly irresistible, and Stephen Fry's Cheshire Cat is suitably seductive.


But Helena Bonham-Carter's Red Queen... ah, there she was, channelling Miranda Richardson's gloriously monstrous Queenie from Blackadder, though, alas, missing her Nursie ("right breasty-dumpling... or left breasty-dumpling...?"). Except that Richardson had that evil core which made her creation terrifying: Bonham-Carter felt more like a Panto Dame.


The 3D was more subtle than usual, but each scene followed that basic guidance for amateur photographers -- make sure there's a tree branch or a lamp-post in the foreground of any shot, to give it the illusion of depth. Ironically, the artificiality of it all made the 3D seem more like an illusion than reality.


But this is a Tim Burton film, and you know what you're likely to get. You get it.


And (whisper this...) is it just me, or is everyone getting a bit bored with Johnny Depp's tics, mannerisms and all-round kookiness?