Burton's 'Alice' needs a little more wonder

TIM BURTON, Lewis Carroll, Johnny Depp, 3-D Imax - sounds like a party.

A Mad Hatter's tea party, with beverages that make you small, cakes that make you big, and tasty images that will feed your head. And there is some nourishment to be had in "Alice," which at its best blends the director's sense of the macabre with Carroll's surreal whimsy.

But as parties go, it's not the mindblower you probably hoped for - don't expect to wake up next to boxer Mike Tyson's pet tiger, wondering where the previous day went.

"Alice" has some dazzling eye candy, and is often funny. It's also emotionally chilly, and sometimes disappointingly familiar. The flat climax borrows architecture and action from Narnia, animals from the "The Golden Compass" and psychedelic jungle flora from the movie it's replacing in theaters, "Avatar."

Yeah, I know, I'm a downer. But it's best to keep your expectations reasonable, so you can enjoy the highlights.

These take the form of amusing characterization, when Burton, his actors and his animators (it takes all three in our post-"Avatar" world) get things just right.

The biggest treat is the Red Queen, embodied by Helena Bonham Carter, who captures her character's petulant, entitled evil. Computer artists embellish her self-regard by supersizing her head.

Also delightful are the vaporous Cheshire Cat, wonderfully voiced by Stephen Fry, and the gloomy, pipe-smoking, blue caterpillar who, in this version, becomes Alice's ill-tempered adviser.

Less fun than you might expect - Depp's Mad Hatter, a role enlarged to give him a buddy movie camaraderie with Alice (Mia Wasikowska), another character given a makeover by screenwriter Linda Woolverton.

She's reimagined here as a young woman being pressured into an arranged marriage with an aristocratic twit, retreating into the dream world she visited as a little girl.

This is a favorite Burton theme - salvation via imagination - and, in "Alice," Depp's Hatter is the ringmaster who explains the wonderland circus to Alice, and helps her find the courage to believe in the unbelievable.

But there is little resonance to their friendship, and Depp is shackled by a falsetto voice and garishly tinted eyes that limit his expressive range. (As Edward Scissorhands, he had no voice at all, but his eyes told his story.)

So the stakes are low in the lifeless climax, pitting the Red Queen against White (Anne Hathaway), and the movie just sort of dissolves, like the Cheshire Cat, or the smile you had in Act One.