Grim Illumination

Alice in Wonderland

Directed by Tim Burton

Runtime: 108 min.

The Secret of Kells

Directed by Tomm Moore, Nora Twomey

Runtime: 75 min.

TIM BURTON SUFFERS the same fate as misunderstood actors. He gets miscast in big-budget prestige products—like the new 3-D Alice in Wonderland—depressingly at odds with his always-odd sense of satire and grotesquerie. His 2008 film of Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd was, at least, a pretty-looking debacle. But his Alice in Wonderland is determinedly grim and dour-looking. It never displays the brilliance of pure inspiration that makes the Irish animated film The Secret of Kells one of the most beautiful works of animation ever. Too bad Burton didn’t essay The Secret of Kells.

The only thing missing from The Secret of Kells’ lovely concept (about young Brendan helping 16th-century monks create the illuminated paintings of a Celtic holy book), is a sense of spiritual devotion—the kind of trepidation and wonderment that Burton is usually good at. Instead, The Secret of Kells is plotted commercially—to be an adventure movie, rather than one of faith. Its saving grace is directors Tomm Moore and Nora Twomey’s decision to follow the style of lluminated manuscripts.The movie glows. It’s always aesthetically thrilling, using glyphs and graphics to evoke gothic art and Celtic culture (like Brendan running through the margins of a triptych), which advance the conventions of animated movies.

Surprisingly, Burton brings little such awe to Alice in Wonderland.Working against Disney’s definitive 1955 animated version, Burton uses 3-D to create a mixture of real and surreal, fantasy and allegory. Problem is, Spike Jonze already aced such post-modern aesthetics in the terrific (but unpopular) Where the Wild Things Are. Burton’s film seems confused rather than magical. His Alice, the lanky Mia Wasikowska, a Paltrowian blond, interacts with creatures from the Underworld (previously met when she was pre-pubescent) with simple bafflement. Instead of the erotic symbolism that fueled Neil Jordan’s superb Little Red Riding Hood update, The Company of Wolves (1985), or the philological complexity of Spielberg’s Peter Pan remake Hook, Burton emphasizes an asexual, thus less interesting, approach. (The Linda Woolverton script is disastrously family-friendly and dull.)

Except for the evanescent Cheshire Cat, Burton’s effects are wonderless. Helena Bonham Carter supplies some humor as the heart-craniumed Red Queen (“Off-with-theirheads!” she repeatedly snaps), but 3-D makes her rival the White Queen (Anne Hathaway) dingy and unfocused.The climactic battle between Alice and the Jabberwocky looks like an outtake from Avatar; it suggests that the real auteur of this film is not the mismatched Burton but the anonymous F/X technicians controlling/ruining today’s film content. Burton’s film feels no different than the formulaic The Golden Compass or The Chronicles of Narnia:The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

But The Secret of Kells has a look you’ll remember—because its wonderment is related to Western aesthetic heritage (even the cartoon skin tones are culturally correct). Burton’s Alice in Wonderland shows that this formerly idiosyncratic artiste has become a hack. Not even Johnny Depp—miscast to play the Mad Hatter like Edward Scissorhands—can disguise Burton’s failure. Depp’s break-dancing finale is the sorriest movie spectacle since the Ewoks’ disco dance in Return of the Jedi.