FANTASY

Alice In Wonderland ***

Rated PG • AMC Orange Park, AMC Regency Square, Carmike Amelia Island, Carmike Fleming Island, Epic Theatre St. Augustine, Hollywood River City, Regal Avenues, Regal Beach Blvd.

Go Ask Alice                                                                 PAT McLEOD

Burton's loose adaptation of the children's tale is a visual delight

Already a huge hit, it remains to be seen if the new version of “Alice in Wonderland” has the staying power of “Avatar.” (Some tallies showed “Alice” with a bigger opening weekend than Cameron’s 3-D film.) Regardless of the numbers, the film will have impact: It will certainly be director Tim Burton’s most financially successful film yet, Johnny Depp will continue to mine gold for Walt Disney Pictures and 3-D is here to stay.

This is by no means the definitive film version of Lewis Carroll’s classic, if such a thing were possible. My personal favorites remain the 1966 BBC television production by writer/ /director Jonathan Miller and the 1951 Disney animated version. The original Disney film is probably the most faithful to the original, but Miller captures the eerie tone of Carroll’s books better than anyone else.

Burton’s film is different, weirder rather than eerie. In fact (and this is one of the film’s most ingenious departures), the new “Alice in Wonderland” isn’t even an adaptation but rather a sequel. No wide-eyed pre-teen like Peter Pan’s Wendy, this Alice is a young woman on the brink of marriage, the fulfillment of a woman’s consummate role in Victorian society. It’s either that (an arranged marriage to an aristocratic snob) or a return to the world underground and through the looking glass, where she can take stock of herself and reappraise her options.

Depp as the Mad Hatter is the obvious selling point — and a marketing treasure. Whatever Disney is paying him, the actor is clearly worth it. Most of the tickets sold are probably due to his presence. But Johnny Depp isn’t the heart and soul of “Alice.” That function clearly belongs to Tim Burton, a visionary director if there ever was one, and Mia Wasikowska, the 20-year-old who makes Alice her own.

The screenplay by Disney veteran Linda Woolverton (“Mulan,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “The Lion King”) finds Alice running away from her engagement announcement to follow the White Rabbit down the hole again. For the mature Alice, however, it’s not really a return visit. Though the various denizens of the Underland remember her, she has forgotten them. They, in turn, become worried that she isn’t the real Alice, the one for whom they’ve been waiting.

The Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter, with an oversized head on a diminutive body) has been wreaking havoc in the land, abetted by her Knave (Crispin Glover). No one’s head is safe anymore. The only hope lies with the Red Queen’s younger sister, the White Queen (Anne Hathaway), but even she is unable to wield the Vorpal Blade, the only weapon capable of dealing with the Red Queen’s secret weapon, the fearsome Jabberwocky. Inevitably, of course, that task falls to Alice and her loyal allies, headed by the Mad Hatter, twins Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee (Matt Lucas), and others.

The production design is predictably fabulous, given Burton’s predilections, and the depth and range of details are further boosted by the 3-D. Despite Roger Ebert’s pronounced distaste for the process, 3-D has become more a matter of enhancement in contemporary films than a gimmick. Particularly in movies like “Alice” and “Avatar,” 3-D lets us see more — and see more clearly — the magic and wonder of alien worlds and beings.

Of the many talents lending faces or voices, Bonham Carter deserves the most attention. In her sixth film for Burton (her real-life partner), she is nearly unrecognizable under the digital effects, but she’s nonetheless an absolute hoot as the vain, self-absorbed Red Queen who, by the end of the film, even manages to elicit some sympathy along with the hisses and chuckles.

The pacing drags a bit in the middle, and the conclusion relies too heavily on clichés and special effects. But Mia Wasikowska is enchanting and Johnny Depp is wonderfully weird. The combination makes for a mostly magical “Alice in Wonderland.”

ROMANCE

Remember Me ***

Rated PG-13 • AMC Orange Park, AMC Regency Square, Carmike Amelia Island, Carmike Fleming Island, Epic Theatre St. Augustine, Hollywood River City, Regal Avenues, Regal Beach Blvd.

Love & Death                                     MARYANN JOHANSON

A smartly paced romance rises above the "Twilight" zone

I was resigned to dragging out some lazy, easy “Twilight”-style dis in response to “Remember Me,” maybe something about it “sucking,” or perhaps I could have called it “vampirically pallid.” Because that’s certainly how it looked from the outside. I wouldn’t have enjoyed that, honestly, because while sometimes it’s fun to rag on bad actors and the bad movies they make, I’d been steadfastly clinging to a notion that, despite most evidence, till some moment to the contrary (and yes, I’ve seen nearly everything he’s done), Robert Pattinson holds some promise.

It was making me angry to see his nominal success with those terrible teen vampire movies lead him away from opportunities to prove my notion. It seemed those films were a crassly opportunistic attempt to further cash in on Pattinson’s status as the go-to dreamboat for attracting the squealing hormonal adolescent audience.

As “Remember Me” began unspooling, I saw that perhaps some reference to emotional vampirism would be required, because there appears to be huge potential, from the opening scene, for tragedy porn. Because, as we learn in that opening scene, one-half of the cinematic couple watched her mother get murdered, and soon enough we learn the other half lost his brother to suicide. Oh, the tears and the gnashing of teeth and the rending of clothing that should ensue!

But they don’t. “Remember Me” turns out to be quietly charming and coarsely handsome, a sensitively observed story about young people in love seen through a keen eye for the unglamorous side of New York City that we don’t often see on film these days. (If Martin Scorsese had made this movie in 1977, it might look like this, splendidly sated with the dirty, cluttered, human city.)

Aidan (Tate Ellington), best friend and roommate of our hero, Tyler Hawkins (Pattinson), snarks half-jokingly about Tyler’s “brooding” and the “poetic crap” that makes him so attractive to women (it works as sly commentary on Pattinson’s “Twilight” appeal, too).

Tyler draws in Ally (Emilie de Ravin), a fellow student at NYU: She’s all but ready to dismiss him entirely before reluctantly agreeing to a date because, well, why not? He’s cute and funny and, well, why not?

Tyler has an ulterior motive for asking her out — something to do with her cop father (Chris Cooper) — and though that will inevitably out itself once Tyler and Ally have actually fallen deeply in love, newcomer Will Fetters’ screenplay manages to keep it fresh when it does come to pass.

Director Allen Coulter avoids all sense of the shiny or phony with the romance: Where most films about young love somehow manage to feel neither romantic nor sexy, Pattinson and de Ravin are so genuine that I fell in love with them as a couple. They’re sweetly adorable, never annoying or cloying. (I wish Coulter had reined in Pattinson’s one unfortunate scene of histrionics, having the actor underplay instead of go big, because the rest of the film demonstrates how effective an actor and how appealing a screen presence he can be.)

And there’s plenty more that’s entirely novel and delivered with just the right blend of airiness and earnestness, like Tyler’s relationship with his 11-year-old sister, Caroline (Ruby Jerins), and their jointly strained relationship with their wealthy lawyer father (Pierce Brosnan), which appears to be what drove Tyler away from the family and into his pretense of life as a poor student. Pattinson and Jerins together are lovely to watch.

The only thing about “Remember Me” that gives pause is where it takes Tyler’s and Ally’s relationship. If the film really insisted it had to go there, then how it gets there is probably done as well as it could be: It’s hinted at just right, neither giving itself away too early nor holding it a great secret for too long, and it’s not overplayed once it does get there. I’m just not sure the movie needed  to go there. I understand the point it’s making, but it might have made the same point in a less-loaded way. Of course, the loadedness of its point is part of its point.

I’m not sure if, ultimately, “Remember Me” works, then, because of how it ends. But I respect Fetters and Coulter for trying, and for being so authentic in how they

got there.

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