HUNTSVILLE — Tim Burton is a force unto himself in Hollywood. He’s one of the few modern directors that practically has his own cult (Don’t believe me? Walk into any Hot Topic and look at the amount of “Nightmare Before Christmas” merchandise hanging about.), and as a result he manages to have a level of creative control that makes many of his contemporaries green with envy.

Burton has always set himself apart with a unique visual style and a flair for wrangling even the darkest and strangest of projects into blockbusters (he’s the man who made kids love a film about a man who marries a dead woman, after all). He’s drawn ire, he’s drawn high praise (and even worship), but he always manages to make money.

The point I’m trying to make is that the man can pretty much do whatever he wants, and three years ago, as part of a deal with Disney, he chose to do “Alice In Wonderland,” something many Burton fans considered a dream project for Hollywood’s Prince of Darkness (by the way, I just bestowed on him that title and I’m hoping it catches on).

Less an adaptation of the Lewis Carroll stories than an adaptation of the world in which they take place, Burton’s film takes familiar characters and motifs and places them in a new, slightly more demented light. It’s an exciting idea-one of our finest visual storytellers in one of the most visual appealing fantasy worlds ever dreamed up-but the end result is at best a collection of impressive moments in the midst of a muddled and uninspiring landscape.

Thirteen years have passed since the events of the Lewis Carroll stories, and Alice (Mia Wasikowska), now a young woman of marriageable age being bored to tears in Victorian England, believes her past encounters with a hatter, a rabbit, a caterpillar and a queen to be nothing more than a recurring dream.

To escape a rather awkward marriage proposal at an upscale garden party, Alice flees into the woods hot on the tail of a white rabbit in a waistcoat, and goes tumbling down a hole beneath a tree and back into a land called Underland., where she again meets the Tweedledee and Tweedledum (both voiced by Matt Lucas), the Caterpillar (Alan Rickman), the Dormouse (Barbara Windsor) and the Dodo (Michael Gough) none of whom really believe that she’s the Alice that visited them before.

Convinced that she’s wondering around in a dream yet again, Alice discovers that Underland lies in ruins under the crushing heel of the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter), who, with the aid of a dragon-like creature called the Jabberwocky (readers of Carroll’s work will know what that is) and the treacherous Knave of Hearts (Crispin Glover) has wrested the crown of Underland away from the White Queen (Anne Hathaway) who is now living in exile.

Alice finds allies in the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp), now madder than ever before, who remembers all to well the destruction that has befallen his home, and the Cheshire Cat (Stephen Fry) who simply enjoys inciting a bit of chaos in the world. Together they set out to recapture a mystical sword set to be the only weapon that can slay the Jabberwocky. But still, Alice doesn’t believe any of it’s real, or that she’s the person they claim she is: the only person capable of slaying the beast.

Like every Burton film, we are treated to stunning and unpredictably magnificent visuals, from the Hatter prancing madly across a long table set for tea to the White Queen gliding through her luminous garden. Never once does the uniqueness of what you’re seeing grow stale. Unfortunately, other things do.

It seems both cheap and far too easy to take one of the most complexly strange universes every placed upon paper and reduce it to a tale about a girl going to slay a dragon. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good dragon slaying as much as the next guy, but it’s out of place in this world, and it’s consumption of the entire third act throws the film wildly off pace.

Burton and screenwriter Linda Woolverton (“The Lion King”) work hard in the first act to build complex layers of stifling Victorianism on Alice, then proceed to break them down and replace them with Wonderland’s aesthetic and psychological charms in the second, only to tear it all apart in the third with a battle scene, which sadly is an uneven and sometimes almost comical thing to watch. Seeing the Mad Hatter holding a broad sword and preparing to duel with the Knave of Hearts reminds me of bad fan fiction, not of one of the best filmmakers of our time.

In spite of its rather unfortunate twist in the home stretch, the film does manage to provide moments of absolute delight interwoven throughout. The Cheshire Cat’s grin is as fun as ever to watch, as are the Hatter’s wild mood swings and the Queen’s willingness to decapitate anyone who mocks or even questions her own rather bulbous cranium. The greatest joy of the film lies here, in the in-between bits. Watching the Hatter place hat after hat on the Red Queen’s head just to buy time for Alice to hatch her plans further, that’s where the real magic is.

There’s also a fistful of wonders to be had in a magnificent cast. Depp, billed as the film’s star to make up for lack of recognition of Wasikowska’s name, continues to build on his reputation as one of acting’s great chameleons. His Hatter, while not always entertaining, is at least constantly compelling, and packs a considerable degree of complexity. Wasikowska herself packs plenty of punch in the title role, giving the grown-up Alice all the wonder of her youth, with a degree of swagger to deepen the character. The true stars, though, are the voice actors, particularly Rickman and Fry, who give weight and a marvelous sophistication to their respective roles as Caterpillar and Cheshire Cat. Anne Hathaway also shines (literally and otherwise) as the White Queen, rising above her wholesome image to fill out a character who is at once resplendent and slightly psychotic. If nothing else, Burton knows where to find the right people.

Maybe we should blame Disney for the film’s lack of daring and unfortunately thin plot (at one point Alice simply decides she’s going to help the people she thinks are imaginary, and we’re never really sure why), but honestly, Burton has to take some of the blame as well. No one questions his artistic prowess, but filmmaking is as much about conveying an emotional story as it is about how you make your camera follow a body down a rabbit hole, and he often seems to underutilize the former of those qualities. “Alice in Wonderland” is a film that’s a feast for the eyes, but offers very little for the heart.

Matt’s Call: The kids will be wowed by what they’re seeing, and they might even find a few funny voices to imitate. I’m betting you’ll be at least a little entertained, but it’s hardly a very important date.