Review: Tim Burton’s ‘Alice In Wonderland’ falls just short

Step aside, Johnny: You’ve got serious competition in the scene-stealing department.

As the tantrum-prone Red Queen saddled with a basketball-sized noggin, Helena Bonham Carter does for “Alice in Wonderland” what Depp achieved as swaggering Jack Sparrow in “Pirates of the Caribbean” — making an average movie better. Every time the quirky British actress appears on screen to glare, purse her lips — painted to resemble hearts (nice) — and explosively bark out, “Off with their heads!,” Bonham Carter’s electrifying.

That nothing in her real-life partner Tim Burton’s 3-D tinkering of the Lewis Carroll adventures — rumored to have cost $250 million — matches her isn’t an outright slam of the film or of Burton. The “Sweeney Todd” actress is such a force here that she could make James Cameron’s more visually impressive Pandora wilt in the background.

The primary culprits for “Alice’s” failings are Disney and a few cheesy 3-D effects. At a couple of key points, the studio makes Burton adhere too rigidly to the Disney standard, a move that boxes in the madcap director and tempers his bizarreness. That’s obvious in the botched final moments when the screenplay scurries about like the White Rabbit straining to wrap up everything in a neat, happily-ever-after package.

While the payoff is predictable, the world of Wonderland that Burton invents, along with the performances other than Anne Hathaway’s — a dud as the White Queen — give “Alice” enough enchantment.

Always a pleasure to watch, Depp roots around in his bag of tricks to play the Mad Hatter, mashing up “Benny & Joon” loopiness with his curiouser turn as Willie Wonka. The versatile actor successfully adds a quieter dimension to the complicated Hatter, showing us someone struggling mightily to rein in mood swings.

It’s another example of Depp trumping our expectations. You enter “Wonderland” anticipating he’ll be a maniac on screen; instead, he tempers his outlandish character and transforms the Mad Hatter into a sympathetic man-child.

He is a refreshing surprise in a sensory experience gone mad, almost too mad, with sweeping special effects that oscillate from the magnificent (the Red Queen’s grounds are stunning high points) to the uneven (the White Queen’s unremarkable kingdom).

The Wonderland that Burton imagines rekindles our cherished recollections of Alice’s adventures while landscaping it in the rich, patented Goth look the filmmaker treasures. The dark tone makes the film’s target audience more along the lines of the “Twilight” and college-age set than the SpongeBob sort since it’s likely to freak out little ones.

The plot toys with the two Carroll classics, “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking-Glass.” Late in the film we learn that we should start calling Alice’s secret habitat Underland, not Wonderland, since a younger Alice mangled the pronunciation during her first rabbit-hole plunge.

This revelation is one sign that this “Alice” isn’t interested in being a mirror image of Carroll’s fables, an approach that works most of the time while still retaining the wonderment of the first Alice book, published in 1865.

Burton and screenwriter Linda Woolverton (Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast”) present us with an older, more feminist-minded Alice (relative newcomer Mia Wasikowska, who stands tall here in every way). The 19-year-old Alice doesn’t fit into tightly buttoned English society, especially when she discovers at a tea party that she’s likely to become the betrothed of an ugly snob. Our heroine interrupts the proposal by making a mad dash after the forever-late rabbit and, well, you know where she’s headed.

Alice discovers she’s the key component in ending the feud between squabbling sisters the Red Queen and the White Queen. This gives Burton a chance to really play with effects in a climactic showdown that summons up one frightful Jabberwocky and an army of cards. It’s great fun, and helps us forgive but not forget lesser scenes, including a rather uninspired barreling to the bottom of the rabbit hole and some of the White Queen malarkey.

Because of these foibles, “Wonderland” never quite becomes magical. You leave the theater with a pleasant grin on your face, but by no means is it as wide as the Cheshire Cat’s, and that’s a shame.