Alice in Wonderland

STARRING: Johnny Depp, Mia Wasikowska, Helena Bonham Carter, Anne Hathaway, Crispin Glover
DIRECTED BY: Tim Burton

HOLY COW!

I love Alice in Wonderland--always have. I have been excited about this since I first heard about it. I did not opt to see this in 3-D and I was glad that didn't as I honestly think I would have been nauseous the entire time due to sensory overload (and the person that I saw it with said the exact same thing).

With Tim Burton at the helm, obviously this is not the saccharine sweet Disneyfied animated version that a lot of people grew up on. It is dark. The Alice stories are dark. It is disturbing. The Alice stories are disturbing. It is a wild mind altering force. You get the picture.

The images are beautiful. Flower heads, dragon flies, rocking horse flies, the small things that we loved about the cartoon are worked into the movie. There are certain movies that require computer assistance, and this is one of them, and it is done well.

The characters are as zany and mad as they are in the original. Depp is on the top of his game as usual. Hathaway and Bonham Carter are the essence of their characters. The mythical characters are well done.

Alice, somewhat grown up now, evades a boorish dilemma by following a white rabbit and once again finds herself in Wunderland (or rather Underland--the "W" is apparently silent). The Red Queen has taken over and things are relatively miserable. A champion is needed, a battle ensues, and things kinda get boring after that, but the movie is also almost over.

The movie is true to the story we are familiar with in a lot of ways. There are some new elements thrown in, obviously. This is not necessarily a movie for young children, but older kids will probably really like it. There is also an interesting Wizard of Oz type parallel that works. The movie does not set itself up for sequels, interestingly enough. Although there is a weird chemistry between Alice and the Mad Hatter, which could spawn spawn, I mean sequels.

5 stars