My Wonderful Alice in Wonderland Review

Seeing all the posters and advertisements for this one would assume that Johnny Depp is the only thing going on in this movie. I digress.

There is a lot on Johnny's shoulders in this one. He has a good amount of screen time, but he totally loses himself in the character, even changing his voice several times. He delivered.

The creatures are pretty close to the book but not slavish to it. This is probably my favorite rendition of The White Rabbit.

Don't go into this movie thinking it's a another straight forward telling of the book. Don't let the title fool you it's a sequel all the way. I thought Alice looked a little older in this one.

The girl playing Alice did a great job defining who Alice actually is. This is interesting because she's about to get engaged in this film so it's a little adult-themed already.

She sees The White Rabbit when she has to make a tough decision about marrying the wrong man. This beginning set up goes on for a bit and I was wondering if the kids were hanging in there.

She meets most of the creatures from Wonderland and some from the Looking Glass World.

No real complaints here. I do kind of wish Tweedle Dee and Dum had spinning beanies like in the cartoon. Speaking of the Disney cartoon there are some homages to it, but I won't spoil it here.

The look and voice of the Cheshire Cat was really good. This grin he had is amazing. Very close to the book and here the 3-D probably looks the best as he disappears in and out of the foreground and background.

Helena Bonham Carter does a great job as The Queen of Hearts. She plays the role very real and they add a lot more to her character in this. You get some back some back story on her family.

The White Queen in this is nice but I felt she needed a bit more in this.

The Jabberwocky was pretty close to the book here with this exception - no coat jacket with tie. Oh well, the long neck and octopus face was good enough.

The ending gives Alice some real-life things to attend to which ads credibility to a real-life happy ending.
A realistic ending.

Really, I think the key to making a good Alice movie is making the creatures unique and funny. I think Tim succeeds here.

I like how he leaves the question of Wonderland being real or a dream completely open for interpretation and I love the fact that he's not really trying to say anything to heavy-handed in this.

8.5 out of 10