Underwhelmed in Wonderland

I went to see Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland last night at Cineworld. The reek of ripoff popcorn fills the nostrils as you walk in. The magic of cinema weaves its spell before you have taken your seat, for you feel instantly transported to an airport departure hall right there in the foyer. A cavernous carpeted barn full of queuing people.

We had planned ahead and bought tickets online to avoid the queues, but with a third of the ticket machines out of order our wait was just as long. We then had to go upstairs and buy 3D spectacles from the bar, before making our way through a labyrinth of gloomy passages to the auditorium.

We settled in to our seats, and began the process of mentally zoning out all the distractions around us. The talkers, the texters, the sweetie rustlers. The latecomers, the ones making a dash out to the loo.

I had just about managed to achieve a state of zen when a young woman sat next to me and explained that she would be eating her dinner – a Nando’s take away.

Perhaps it was such external irritations and distractions which conspired to dampen my excitement for the film itself. For whatever reason I felt it to be a bit, well, flat. I don’t just mean that the 3D effects were quite subtle, but more that I didn’t find myself entering the fantasy world on-screen.

I could sit there appreciating the visuals and some of the acting, but nothing excited, delighted or scared me. Alice’s fall down the rabbit hole should have been a stomach-turning rollercoaster, for example. It went throught the motions, but was pretty unexciting. The colours are less than vibrant a lot of the time, and the musical score is an almost constant portentious drone rising and falling with the changes in dramatic tempo.

Johnny Depp is at his child-like innocent best of course as the whimsical Mad Hatter and Helena Bonham Carter does an entertaining Miranda Richardson impression as the Red queen. But overall, I have to say that Disney has done to Lewis Carroll what Nando’s have done to chicken. What you get from these large corporations is a product. Acceptable standard fare to a formula worked out by back-room teams with an eye on the bottom line. If you are looking for haute cuisine, then best to move along.