Alice (Mia Wasikowska), now 19, returns to the amazing Wonderland of her childhood, though she doesn’t remember any of it. As is the norm in Wonderland she meets many interesting characters, the Cheshire Cat (Stephen Fry), ther Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp), and Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum (Matt Lucas and Matt Lucas). The Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter) has seized control of Wonderland from her sister, the White Queen (Anne Hathaway). Now Alice must defeat the Red Queen’s champion, the Jabberwock to free Wonderland from an oppressive regime.
With any Tim Burton film you at least know you are going to get a visual feast. This is no exception. However, you also don’t know if you are going to get a good movie or another “Planet of the Apes”. This film falls somehwere in between. Generally Depp works well in Burton films. The Mad Hatter though, I don’t know, there was just something about him, something I can’t quite place. The casting in general was good though, how can you go wrong with using Gary Oldman for voice over work. Christopher Lee as the voice of the Jabberwock, and I have always enjoyed Helena Bonham Carter. However, no character really seemed to stand out to me, something that can be a problem in any Burton film, characters are overwhelmed by the scenery.
This is probably about the 100th adaptation of Lewis carrol’s story to be brought to film, and perhaps that is part of the problem. There is so little left to explore here, so few stones that haven’t just been simply over turned, but they have been polished, smashed, and turned into dust. This may lead you to believe that I really didn’t like the movie, but that isn’t entirely true. I liked bits of it. The whole thing together though seems a bit disjointed and leaves you with a feeling as if things were a tad rushed. I understand that the entire story of Alice in Wonderland is a kids story, well, for the most part it is, but I found at times the film was overly childish. Maybe I’m just getting old, 3 Axes.