'After all, this is MY dream.'

Rating: 8/10 (3 June 2010)

ALICE IN WONDERLAND is a merry mixed bag of a film. The criticisms range from adulation to condemnation and that usually identifies an artwork worth visiting. No, this is not Lewis Carroll's wondrous book intact: it s a variation on a theme of that book and there are so many aspects of the original here that those whose childhoods (and adulthoods) captured so much of the wild imagination and hilarious dialogue of this ma group of otherland creations that the film will at least connect on many levels to everyone. One suspects that with the manner in which the movie begins (a haughty 'engagement announcement' party at which the now 19 year old Alice Kingsleigh is set up to become betrothed to a dullard geek and runs from the gazebo setting out of dismay) is the reason for the restoration of individualism in the Alice that returns from slide down the rabbit hole return to Wonderland. Linda Woolverton's screenplay is creaky at times, but wisely keeps enough of the fantasy alive before drowning it in an ending that is perilously close to gluttonous CGI mess.
The flavor is pure Tim Burton and his style fits this adaptation well. To justify the return of the elder Alice to the world at the end of the rabbit hole Burton has to have a driver: Alice (Mia Wasikowska) is needed to evict the evil Red Queen (Helen Bonham Carter so that the good White Queen (a miscast Anne Hathaway) can restore calm and order to Underland. Many of Carroll's characters are used as CGI creations - Tweedledum/Tweedledee (voice of Matt Lucas), Cheshire Cat (voice of Stephen Fry), the White Rabbit (voice of Michael Sheen), the Blue Caterpillar (a wonderful voice character for Alan Rickman), the talking Flowers (voice of Imelda Staunton), and the hound dog Bayard (voice of Timothy Spall), etc. The Mad Hatter is well captured by Johnny Depp and some genuine realism is added via the transformative presence of Marton Csokas as the young Alice's now departed father Charles Kingsleigh.
Where the movie gets off track is the final battle with the monsters that protect the Red Queen. It just gets expensively silly here and certainly not a film for young children: the violence is disturbing. But there is enough to like in this DVD version - even without the advantage (I suppose there was one) of theatrical 3D. And as Alice keeps reminding everyone, 'This is MY dream.'
Grady Harp