It's a mad mad mad good world

Rating: 8/10 (5 March 2010)

Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland" is actually a sequel of sorts (think Steven Spielberg's "Hook", only much better) which again sees Alice go down the rabbit hole but imagines it in a completely different way. Linda Woolverton's script is like a blending of Lewis Carroll's books with "Lord of the Rings", which is actually a bit like "Chronicles of Narnia", only much darker and more eccentrically fun. Enough with the comparisons! What I'm trying to say is "Alice in Wonderland" brings an excitement to the fairytale that I've not seen in a long time. Mia Wasikowska does a superb job as Alice, now a teen being forced into marriage. She runs off and falls down the rabbit hole and into a strange world of talking rabbits, caterpillars, and Tweedle-dees and Tweedle-Dums. There are also dangerous creatures as well, like a humongous dragon that Alice is prophesized to fight in order to save wonderland. The evil Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter) has taken over wonderland from her sister, the White Queen (Anne Hathaway), and plunged it into darkness. The Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp) has taken this especially hard and gone a bit loco (more so I guess). Is this all a dream? Has Alice been here before? Alice eventually must learn to come into her own as a hero and help the white queen and the other creatures beat the Red Queen or all will be lost, starting with their heads. This is thrilling stuff made predictably better by Burton and his production team. This is a wonderland scorched black by evil that still manages to keep a Gothic beauty (the make-up and costume design is perfect), a disturbing darkness (the red queen's castle is surrounded by a lake filled with dead heads) and eccentricity (the red queen's abnormally huge head and little body was a favorite of the characters). The cast is also game. Depp gives a surprisingly sweet-natured performance that erratically shifts into a crazy little giggle or Scottish accent on occasion, but he is wisely made a supporting player here. Wasikowska is the real find, as the conflicted and spirited Alice, probably one of the best female heroines to come around in a while. Hathaway is pure elegance as the white queen and Bonham Carter seems to be having the most fun as the queen of mean. It's also nice to see Crispin Glover, doing what he does best as the red queen's sinister henchman. Burton again makes the fairy-tale his own. I loved it.