Movie review - Alice in Wonderland

First things first...Tim Burton's Alice is not a re-telling of Lewis Carrol's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland or even Through the Looking Glass. It combines elements of both, but is instead a expansion of the two stories whereby a 19 year old Alice (rather than the 7 year old child) runs away from the *real* world where she is expected to marry a horrid aristocrat, instead returning to Underland (Wonderland) where she is supposed to fulfill her destiny in ending the reign of the Red Queen (of Hearts).

First things first, I don't think Alice is as bad as some reviews appear to be making out. The visuals of this movie are great and the short running time of 108 minutes meant that I didn't develop Avatar-esque impatience when the *gee whizz!* feeling of the 3D visuals wore off. The acting is a bit patchy - the voice acting from Alan Rickman (the Caterpillar) and Stephen Fry (the Cheshire Cat) is particularly good while Helena Bonham-Carter is highly amusing as the bratty Red Queen. Not so good is Anne Hathaway whose floaty gestures and pouting worried face annoyed me no end, while I don't understand why Johnny Depp's Mad Hatter slipped in and out of a Scottish accent. *shrug*

The plot I found to be both overly simplisted and convoluted at the same time. Alice is supposed to depose the Red Queen by killing Jabberwocky, but there are other challenges in the form of figuring out if she is the right Alice and then self-belief issues. I suppose this may be partly due to books being a sequence of events rather than plot-driven so they need to put a plot in to explain what's going on to fit with *reimaging.* The loss of certain elements that people would expect (expanding and shrinking, run ins with the Caterpillar, Cat, Tweedles, and Tea Party etc) would probably irritate audiences. There was one thing that made me particularly go a bit *er......* The movie concludes with Alice regaining her independence and maturity by deciding to be one of the first people to open trade between Britain and China...but that had been happening since the 18th century, far earlier than the late Victorian Era shown here.

Anyway, overall, it's okay. Probably helped that I'd read a lot of bad reviews before watching so perhaps try not to expect too much and all will be enjoyable!
7/10