ALICE IN WONDERLAND (PG)

Burton long ago sacrificed narrative coherence for visual extravaganza

The seventh collaboration between Johnny Depp and Tim Burton seems like a natural fit for the pair. Lewis Carroll’s Victorian fairytale set in a phantasmagorical world is right up Burton’s street, full of the kind of trappings he’s always put into his films, and with Depp in a beefed up role as the Mad Hatter the signs were good.

Somewhat predictably though, it’s something of a disappointment, a crazed and chaotic mishmash of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass and Jabberwocky. But for all its Jubjub birds and vorpal swords, it ends up most resembling The Wizard of Oz, without coming anywhere close in terms of storytelling.

It begins with a prologue in which young Alice has nightmares about a magical land of dodos and blue caterpillars. Years later as a 19-year-old (played by Australian newcomer Mia Wasikowska) she’s miffed at having to take part in society functions, especially when she learns she’s to be engaged to the frightful Hamish.

She’s much too flighty and imaginative to be tied down and when she sees a rabbit in a waistcoat she gives chase and falls down a rabbit hole, finding herself in a strange world where its inhabitants wonder if she’s the real Alice, the one who visited them many years before.

The land is ruled by the tyrannical Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter) and the prophecy says that on the Frabjous Day, Alice will slay the Jabberwock and her sister the White Queen (Anne Hathaway) will once again wear the crown.

There’s some interest in the early parts of the film, with Alice’s tumble down the rabbit hole making good use of the 3D, but it’s a technology that makes everything so muddy. The main selling point is of course an unhinged Depp who, with an accent for some reason going between lisping English and broad Glaswegian, brings a dark madness to the tea party and much of what the Hatter does.

This gives way to a droopy midsection where there’s a lot of sitting about waiting for the plot to reignite. It’s all very madcap and anarchic, but it’s that very nuttiness that keeps you from getting a hold on just what exactly the plot is meant to be.

Blame Burton, a director who long ago sacrificed narrative coherence for visual extravagance. The design is breathtaking but there’s an overwhelming sense that it’s not much more than a selection of not especially well-connected sequences strung together with no great plan or reason.

Still, every character and actor is 100% believable and any fun that is to be had comes from the wonderful cast. Wasikowska is impressively feisty and sparky as Alice, Hathaway is hilariously fey and Bonham Carter channels Miranda Richardson’s Queen Elizabeth from Blackadder to amusing effect. Stephen Fry is suitably louche as the Cheshire Cat, and Matt Lucas looks scarily plausible as Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

But ultimately, like last year’s A Christmas Carol, you’ve got to think that Disney have made Alice in Wonderland not because of any burning desire to tell a good story, but because technology and commerce have intersected with an established property that will allow them to keep the box office tills ringing until Easter.

Director: Tim Burton

Running time: 108mins

CRAZY HEART (15)

Why Jeff Bridges will probably go home with an Oscar

Jeff Bridges will very likely be going home with an Oscar on Sunday night for his performance in Crazy Heart.

It’s a fine turn, certainly worth placing in his top half dozen, though there’s a sense that it’s a bit of a career award.

But when that career is as remarkable as Bridges is, it would be churlish to complain whatever the reasons for him getting it are.

His role as washed-up country singer Bad Blake is thematically quite similar to Mickey Rourke’s career-defining one last year in The Wrestler – a once great performer well past his prime who is plagued with health problems and forced to work for chump change, but finds solace with a younger woman and is given the opportunity for one last crack at the big time.

A wonderful script economically sketches Bad’s existence; reduced to playing in bowling alleys for bourbon money, he’s too drunk to perform properly while his old band-mate and protégé (Colin Farrell) is a big success.

With four marriages behind him and a son he hasn’t seen in 25 years, he’s heading nowhere until he meets Maggie Gyllenhaal, a journalist who gives him something to live for.

Though a little meandering, it’s at its best in the first half as a portrait of a life, with a second half that sometimes lacks focus and threatens to add some unnecessary melodrama.

But Bridges is magnificent, completely inhabiting a character who doesn’t necessarily want to self destruct even though that’s the path he’s on, and he owns the film from the first frame to the last.

Director: Scott Cooper

Running time: 111mins

LEGION (15)

Hilariously po-faced action horror should be a lot more fun

The end of the world is nigh yet again, but instead of zombies this week god has sent down angels to eradicate humanity.

Salvation is at hand in the shape of Paul Bettany as a gun-toting Archangel Michael, come to protect mankind in the final reckoning that will take place at a diner in the middle of the desert and be settled with lots of heavy weaponry, just like in the Bible.

Oh, and it’s set at Christmas and there’s a pregnant girl whose child must be saved at all costs. Melding the basic premise of The Terminator with the Book of Revelation and dressing it up as a hilariously po-faced action horror leads to mixed results.

The special effects are nifty and there are a couple of solid fight sequences, but the dialogue is feeble and it’s brutally dull for long stretches in the middle. Bettany is well cast and you can always rely on Dennis Quaid to provide stoic support but Legion really should be a lot more fun.

Director: Scott Stewart

Running time: 100 mins