Alice in Wonderland

Tim Burton's latest fantasy, Alice in Wonderland, could be compared with his previous cinematic exercises in CGI and edgy surrealism. Each of them is uniquely different, though, using various techniques and varying levels of noir-tinged whimsy.

In fairness, his Alice should be only be compared with past efforts by others in the same genre : hi-tech adaptations of classic children's stories. Viewed like that, as most movie-goers would see it, it's more spectacular and entertaining than the tedious Narnia epics and the failed franchise that starred a wasted Nicole Kidman.

At first sighting, I found Alice a more bewitching set of fables and fabulous characters than Burton's screen version of Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. This time, Burton's marital partner, Helena Bonham Carter, has the juicier role, pouting with engagingly menacing melancholy as the enormously-big-headed Red Queen. Burton's other long-time movie collaborator, Johnny Depp, has less fun. As the Mad Hatter, his on-screen charisma is diminished by enormous green eyeballs, a wild orange wig, front-gapped teeth and Brit accents that switch from the Home Counties to Scotland (deliberately, Depp having thought they'd represent different psyches in the Hatter's character, not that an audience would know that unless they watch the making-of dvd bonus). Depp's madcap swishes and sighs recall both his piratical Jack Swallow and one of Burton's earliest lead actors, Pee-Wee Herman.

On reflection, though, Alice pales in comparison with Burton's previous cinematic eccentricities. The movie lacks the OTT charms of Chocolate, Nightmare Before Christmas, Corpse Bride and Sweeney Todd and the rest of a unique movie maestro's dazzling concoctions.

His new movie's visual appeal depends much on an array of cute CGI and SFX. Some work. The fatter half of Little Britain doubles up neatly as Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Crispin Glover, who deserved a supporting Oscar nomination for playing feeble father George McFly in Back to the Future, is a suave eye-heart-patched villain. As dragons go, the Jabberwocky is fine, but the Bandersnatch's better and Bayard is another lovable canine.

However, the Cheshire Cat's grins don't convey enough character, a key factor lacked too by the Dormouse and March Hare and, most tellingly, Alice herself. Looking like Gwynneth Paltrow on a bad-hair day, she's played by a young, presumably Polish-American, actress called Mia, who really has to change her surname. She's competent, but not a commanding presence. Ditto, regrettably, for Anne Hathaway's icy White Queen.

A galaxy of British acting talents sparkle as comic faces and voices, and some of the SFX may be side attractions when the movie's seen in 3D/IMAX. Overall, however, they are nowhere near as eye-popping or integral to the storyline as those in Avatar.

Burton and the screenplay adaptor loyally kept a lot of Lewis Carroll's manic wordplay, which will befuddle modern youngsters and any movie-goers who never had the Victorian writer's fantasies read aloud to them.

I ought to re-read the endings of her adventures to verify whether Alice, back from Wonderland ("Underland" for Burton's younger Alice) really did set sail for China to expand her father's trading business. Is that truly curiouser ending the sign of a sequel in the making at the back of Burton's brain? Or yet another gesture by Hollywood in the direction of its potential biggest emerging market? Mission Impossible went to Shanghai, 2012's world was saved by Chinese speed-workers, so who'd be surprised if Alice popped up again beside the Yangtze.