Thank you for your thoughts. I feel, despite some ramblings, you bring up and explore some very good points.

Interesting review. When I first saw in the previews that it was grown-up Alice returning to Wonderland, I thought "Oh God, what have they done now?" At least it sounds far better than I thought it would be, given the other movie I had the misfortune of seeing that you brought up
(Yes, Planet of the Apes gves the movie category "Dreck!" a bad name for more reasons than I can name in one sentence...)

Fun read. At least it's not the ones I've heard that drive me nuts because they come and say "I hated the movie it wasn't this or that' and in the end though if I ask them "well did you at least have FUN while you where watching it? Otherwise I don’t see why you bothered staying to the end, you could have left and gotten your money back" And they are forced to admit that they had fun and did enjoy the film. They just didn't think it was Alice in Wonderland.

I've seen many remakes and re-imaginings of the Alice mythos, and I've come to the conclusion you CAN call it a 'mythos' rather than just a charming children's book. Since it's release there are today many who've never READ the story, only seen made for TV movies or heard the lines quoted.

American McGee's Alice was a re-imagining of the story. Taking it from the story to a horror filled romp through a girl's mind as she tries to regain her sanity. Recently SyFi (why they bother changing their name to something so silly looking) did a rather interesting retake on the story as well. While ot a movie (yet) the book series "Looking Glass Wars" is a very good re-imagining that I really enjoyed.

Tim Burton's is yet another re-imagining of the story and Was a rather good romp, if not completely true to the books.

As for the Mad Hatter, I find that a lot of people have taken the hatter and made him more than just cameo character who appears a couple times through out the books. Often too they like to match him and Alice together especially when using the 'older Alice' stories. But then given the lack of 'human' characters it's not a wonder why.

As for Depp's version, my roomie is a phsyc major and she says he's rather fairly accurately portrayed a particular type of schizophrenia. He gains and looses several accents, mood swings and while he could be 'sensible' at times, he wasn't always sane. But then, mildly insane is not the same as completely Mad as a Hatter....

If we follow Carroll's own lead, it would probably have made more sense to develop the bond between Alice and the White Knight. (Who Carroll saw partly as himself.) But that would pair a young girl with an old duffer. While that may have been thinkable in Victorian times, it isn't so thinkable today.

And we call *them* "Victorian!"

Yes, so while it could be possible to make the white knight younger. Again we get left with a short list of characters.
As it is, while they did seem to have someting, it felt more like friendship between the two in this movie.

Thanks for the review, far better written than my own on Flixter.

After reading yours, i noticed a few things that i had missed. The Mad Hatter and the March Hare i think both represent Aunt Imogene, both at different stages of madness, the Hatter clinging to an idea that everyone else has given up on (more or less, Alice wouldn't've gotten there if everyone had), and the Hare is where that can lead if one never gives up. Tweedle Dee and Dum and her twin cousins come off as similar because of that connection where they're almost the same person, but not quite.

As to the point of the movie, i think it was a lesson, we start in the real world seeing a girl being forced to follow a pre-determined path, and when she arrives in Underland, they have a plan for her she's just expected to follow. While she does follow much of it, she starts by resisting, and comes to learn that one doesn't have to stick to the path laid out for them, but one must know when to follow, and when to lead.

Over all, i quite enjoyed it, definitely worth the $7 i spent to see it, and luckily i didn't have to sit through a ton of 3D ads. 3D is the future of cinema, these days you can have much the same experience with your home theatre as you can in a theatre, but 3D, it'll be a long time before that comes to home users, possibly it'll never be more than an expensive niche product. Hopefully most 3D movies will be made by people like Cameron for whom its an important part of his vision, not just another way to make money from it, since the latter usually results in cheap, crappy and phony looking 3D.

I found the 3D in "Alice" to be something of a headache at times, especially in the early part of the film, where there was too often an enormous depth of perception that changed from second to second. Even if your eye could keep up, it seemed to me that it was blurry. Fortunately, as the film went on, it seemed as though Burton felt he had to show off less, and the 3D effect settled down. Personally, I think it was handled far better in Coraline.

Nods, "I must say, i saw it in old fashioned 2D, and was never really interested in seeing it in 3D. I suppose some stuff might be nice in 3D, but aside from Avatar, i can't recall the last 3D movie i saw. I suppose it might be interesting ifn it were more immersive, since current 3D is like looking through a window, you only see what's in front of you, rather than being surrounded by it like real life, which might be part of the blame for 3D not always working.

Yes, the 3D effects in Coraline were wonderfully understated, used to make the film more 'real' instead of special effects just to be 'special.' This was the first Real3D movie i saw, and I thought it was good, much clearer than the older polarized light 3D systems, until the end of the credits, when the paper mice spiraled out and almost touched my nose. THAT told me that they had much better control of the 3D than they were letting on, and that even greater things were to follow.

Other movies 'over used' the 3D, pulling off too many effects at once, or spending too long in the insane depth of field, and the effects upstage the story rather than support it.

A good review. Like you I had to wonder what the point was in Burton's take on Alice since so little of the original story, or the "inverted logic" of the author, remained. It was more like Lord of the Rings meets Wizard of Oz (complete with an Oz-like ending -- "You were there, and you, and you, too!").

But despite that I still liked it, and the seamless integration of CG and "real" characters is nothing short of amazing. Plus I really liked the March Hare and the Doormouse (who was more Redwall than Carroll).

From the beginning, when I heard that Burton had made "Alice," I realized that whatever else you could say about it, the film would be entertaining. Almost everything Burton does, is, with the solde exception of his "damned, dirty apes" movie.