Stop pretending that Tim Burton and Johnny Depp are a dream team

I'm done with these two!

I’m so glad that Alice in Wonderland is finally coming out. So glad, because finally everyone will stop linking to new trailers and gushing over released photos and fawning over Johnny Depp’s brilliance and losing their minds because they saw Tim Burton speaketh at a comic convention  or got to peek at his high-school doodles at the MoMA. It’s strange, isn’t it?  Strange that in a world of cultural cynics and bald-faced haters Burton and Depp still garner so much goodwill and generate heaps of anticipation, despite the fact it has been two whole decades since these frequent collaborators did anything of lasting note.

Here’s their pre-Alice track record:

• Edward Scissorhands (1990)
• Ed Wood (1994)
• Sleepy Hollow (1999)
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005)
• Corpse Bride (2005)
• Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007)

The only great film here is Edward Scissorhands.

I’ll be generous and give you Ed Wood — despite the fact it’s kind of boring — because Depp is brilliant in it and Burton’s connection to the work of B-movie director/legend Wood elevates it to some unfathomable next-level of meta that can’t just be cooked up in a story meeting (even one with Charlie Kaufmann).

But the rest?

Sleepy Hollow is the prototype for everything wrong with Burton, where the admittedly awesome scenery and Gothic atmosphere overshadows any attempts at character development and swallows the plot whole. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, meanwhile, is everything wrong with Burton’s fans, where we salivate over a property that Burton allegedly was Born to Direct! — despite the fact the original was perfection in the first place. I get it, Burton does dream-scape weirdness very well, but the desire to have him re-make every off-kilter project in history is wrongheaded and also boring. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, despite the best of intentions, is a horrible movie.

Corpse Bride seemed promising because it brought back fond memories of The Nightmare Before Christmas (more on that later), but this time with JOHNNY DEPP. It was charmingly quirky but lazy, Burton re-hashing himself and again favouring technique over storytelling. A lot of people said they liked Sweeney Todd, but I don’t believe them. The movie sure does feel refreshing following the fail of Charlie, but it’s really just Burton superficially and hollowly upping the weirdness by having Depp do off-key musical numbers. Doesn’t anyone remember that Burton’s weirdness used to have weight to it?

But the films look great though, right? Yeah, well, so does that Jennifer Lopez flick The Cell, but you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone in that fan club.

I’d like to propose a theory here: Burton and Depp are ruining each other. They need to stop collaborating, STAT. Looking at their filmographies, I don’t think it’s a stretch to surmise that working with Burton has sent Depp into the deep-end of caricature acting, and Depp’s uncanny ability to disappear into his costume design and accomplish so much without the help of a solid script has fuelled Burton to forgo storytelling for simplistic image making.

When was the last time Depp gave a solid performance playing a real person? Donnie Brasco, an amazing movie, was over ten years ago. I had hopes for last year’s Public Enemies but the film was muddled. You might point out Chocolat, but then I’d have to kill you. Other than that Depp’s been coasting off maybe Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and certainly the Pirates of the Caribbean flicks, a very dismal high-concept franchise. Depp’s Jack Sparrow has earned him waves of accolades, but again, don’t you miss him playing three dimensional characters? Because he can do that, too. Really well. More than a decade’s worth of praise for him playing a funny pirate is like appreciating Tommy Lee Jones for that time he got his cackle on as Two-Face in Batman Forever.

Burton’s non-Depp projects aren’t much better. Batman Returns was in 1992. Since then it’s been dreck like Mars Attacks! and Planet of the Apes. The shining stone in his recent collection is definitely The Nightmare Before Christmas, but his animation follow-ups have been Corpse Bride (as director) and the meandering 9 (as producer). He actually only produced Nightmare, and nowadays I’m more willing to credit it’s greatness to director Henry Selick who previously did James and the Giant Peach and followed up with Coraline, both of which are marvellous and succeed where Burton has repeatedly been failing.

While we’re at it, let’s save Helena Bonham Carter too, who is in danger of succumbing to Depp’s Burton syndrome. No more planets of the big fish ape dead brides! Not for Bonham Carter, please, who can do so much more.

But, of course, I can’t stop the hordes. If you are in fact going to watch Alice in Wonderland this weekend, I hope you have fun. Tell me how it is! If you don’t like it though, can you promise me one thing? Please remember that you didn’t, so that the next time these two talented gents collaborate on a project we can keep our wits about us. And hopefully if we do that enough times they’ll go back to being amazing. Which I still believe they are, somewhere, deep in their black hearts.

(Image via and)