 ***PLEASE NOTE: A Blu-ray 3D disc is only compatible with 3D Blu-ray players.*** Live action shot in 2D and later converted to 3D and the current reference-standard for a live-action 3D conversion. CGI scenes are native 3D. Tagline: Tim Burton + Johnny Depp = Mad Hatter Tumble down the rabbit hole with Alice for a fantastical new adventure from Walt Disney Pictures and Tim Burton. Inviting and magical, Alice In Wonderland is an imaginative new twist on one of the most beloved stories of all time. Alice (Mia Wasikowska), now 19 years old, returns to the whimsical world she first entered as a child and embarks on a journey to discover her true destiny. This Wonderland is a world beyond your imagination and unlike anything you've seen before. The extraordinary characters you've loved come to life richer and more colorful than ever. There's the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp), the White Queen (Anne Hathaway), the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter), the White Rabbit (Michael Sheen) and more. A triumphant cinematic experience - Alice In Wonderland is an incredible feast for your eyes, ears and heart that will captivate audiences of all sizes. Storyline: Alice, an unpretentious and individual 19-year-old, is betrothed to a dunce of an English nobleman. At her engagement party, she escapes the crowd to consider whether to go through with the marriage and falls down a hole in the garden after spotting an unusual rabbit. Arriving in a strange and surreal place called "Underland," she finds herself in a world that resembles the nightmares she had as a child, filled with talking animals, villainous queens and knights, and frumious bandersnatches. Alice realizes that she is there for a reason--to conquer the horrific Jabberwocky and restore the rightful queen to her throne. Written by Jim Beaver Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Martin Liebman on December 9, 2010 -- It's only a dream. --- No filmmaker makes it easier to pick his or her films out of a lineup than the master of the truly insane as art, Tim Burton. Burton's films -- whether live action, animated, or somewhere in between -- have fascinated audiences all the way back to Pee-wee's Big Adventure and on through to movies like Beetlejuice, Batman, Edward Scissorhands, and Sweeney Todd, all of them existing in some richly-realized fictional world where up always seems down, where right always seems left, and where flamboyant color and dense shadow collide in some kind of modernist collage of weirdness that more often than not works as some appealingly perverse but generally, in some form or fashion, family-friendly façade, if that family happens to be named Adams, anyway. With that in mind, Alice in Wonderland seemed the perfect story for a Tim Burton movie. Here's a world -- based on Lewis Carroll's 1865 novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland -- where sometimes up really is down, where right really is left, where bright colors and dark shadows converge, and where nothing is as it seems or as it should be. Wonderland -- or "Underland" as the case may be -- is just that, a playground for both Burton's awkwardly creative eye and the mesmerizing special effects that are the results of the wonders of modern technology. Still, for as good as Burton's final film looks, it lacks, well, something that didn't quite make it down the rabbit hole with good old (and in this version, "old" isn't a bad descriptor) Alice. Young Alice (Mia Wasikowska) seems destined to lead a stuffy English life, a prospect that has her dazed and confused and spying glimpses of a rabbit in an overcoat dashing around Lord Ascot's garden estate. When she's publicly confronted with a proposal for marriage, she dashes away and tumbles into a hole that takes her to the Underland, a land of mystical creatures, topsy-turvy friends, deadly foes, and a destiny for which Alice wants no part. It's not long before a now-minuscule Alice (she drank from the bottle that commanded her to "drink this!") meets several of her Underland allies -- Tweedledum and Tweedledee, a dodo bird, a dormouse, and that running-late white rabbit -- who inform her that she's the one they've been waiting for, the young girl who, as it's been foretold by a compendium known as The Oraculum, will slay the evil Red Queen's (Helena Bonham Carter, Planet of the Apes) Jabberwocky, a dragon-like creature that ferociously breathes out a reign of terror over all the land. The foretold date of her victory is Frabjous Day, but concerns over Alice's identity lead the gang to a smoking caterpillar named Absolem (Alan Rickman, Galaxy Quest) who doubts Alice's identity as the chosen hero of Underland. Nevertheless, Alice -- convinced she's existing in a dream world of her own making -- faces danger on her journey back to consciousness and, with the help of the Hatter (Johnny Depp, the Pirates of the Caribbean films) and the Cheshire Cat (Stephen Fry, V For Vendetta), learns that she may indeed have the strength to save Underland from the head-obsessed Red Queen and her reign of terror. Burton's vision of Alice in Wonderland seems pretty spot-on considering both the source material and the director's own patented style. It's certainly a far cry from the Disney animated movie of the same name from decades past or even the "Star Trek" episode Shore Leave; Burton's modern adaptation is aided immensely by countless and seamless special effects and a budget just this side of the national debt. Visually, the picture is equal parts foreboding shadows and nearly neon hues while also juggling a balance that pits the ordinary against the extraordinary with just about every person, place, and thing looking and sounding anywhere from normal to drastically but almost comically disfigured and disproportioned or, in the case of many of the film's characters, existing in a state of impossibility given the rules of the real world. Hence, "fantasy," and Alice in Wonderland is one of the most fantastical stories ever told and, now, retold by one of the modern world's most gifted crafters of the fantastical. It's no surprise, then, that Alice in Wonderland is Burton's most daring picture yet in terms of sheer visual prowess and excess; the latter in particular seems to be the film's real raison d'etre. In Alice in Wonderland, Burton seizes the opportunity to go all-out without having his peculiarities challenged; after all, it's a modern updating of a tale older than his great-grandfather, written in what is an occasionally nonsensical style meant to both engender humor and further shape a fictitious world where everything exists within some tangible, real space and time and identifiable by readers and, with this film, viewers at a base level but not necessarily at a logical one. Talking caterpillars, vanishing cats, playing cards-as-soldiers, and other oddities shape and define the story but offer ample opportunity for not only fantastical gibberish but visual delight. Stylistically, Burton has unequivocally succeeded in translating Carol's oddball world to the screen, but is there anything beyond the sights and sounds of Underland to make his version worth more than its technical prowess? Unfortunately, Alice in Wonderland's visual delights dwarf whatever semblance of thematic relevancy is to be found in the movie. Alice plays as little more than a humongous chocolate easter bunny, dressed in the brightest and shiniest foil wrapping but turning out to be hollow beyond the first layer of chocolate. Sure, it looks good and tastes even better, but there's just not as much there as one might be led to believe. Alice in Wonderland is a lightweight where it counts, the movie devoid of much meaning beyond serving as a frame for Burton's genius eye and Carroll's imaginative fantasy world. The picture's plot is incredibly thin, disguised by lavish production values but minimalist nonetheless, beginning as a bad Jane Austen-inspired sort of movie and ending with Johnny Depp suddenly turning into Michael Jackson for a fleeting few seconds, with some generic and far-too-stretched-out hybrid story about a girl destined to slay an evil dragon under the control of a grossly resized, slathered-in-makeup, and practically unidentifiable Helena Bonham Carter whose body shape resembles Mr. Mackey and who manages to annoy her way to the heights of villainy. Off with her head! Worse, the remainder of the characters are as unsubstantial as Burton's take on the story, and none have much value beyond helping what plot there is move from beginning to end. Burton standby Johnny Depp is flamboyantly excellent as the Mad Hatter, a character who, oddly enough, graces most of the promotional materials for a movie in which he's not even the title character. He's almost unrecognizable under the excess makeup and orange wig, but he and fellow Mary Kay model Anne Hathaway exuberantly overact and seem to have a blast with the material, unlike poor Bonham Carter whose character is far too lost in makeup, special effects, and screeching commands to matter all that much and do little more than act the part of the side show. Mia Wasikowska turns in a take-it-or-leave-it effort as Alice, looking appropriately dumbfounded here and like she's ready to be cast in the next Narnia movie there. The cast is generally fine but their characters are flimsy at best, and Burton's visual tour-de-force simply crumbles under the old adages that say that neither "too much of a good thing" nor "too little of a good thing" are always good. Balance, my dear filmmakers. Balance. Alice in Wonderland is an overpowered and underdeveloped but nevertheless intriguing and generally fun film that's got it halfway right. Tim Burton's take on Lewis Carroll's make-believe world of Wonder(Under)land is lavishly realized down to the finest detail, but there's still something missing from it all that leaves the movie as devoid of meaning as a solo home run in the bottom of the ninth in a 14-1 ballgame. The film's visual excesses can't mask the underwhelming plot, the well-acted but poorly-scripted characters, and a long middle stretch where not much happens on the way to the predictably inevitable special effects climax. Alice in Wonderland is Burton's most visually arresting film, but it lacks the spirit of Batman, his finest movie where strong characters, a great story, and a pronounced yet balanced noir style all worked to cinematic perfection. Disney's four-disc Blu-ray 3D release of Alice in Wonderland offers up a strong 1080p 3D transfer, an even better lossless soundtrack, and some extras on the 2D Blu-ray disc. As a 3D release, this one's quite good considering all the bells and whistles, and it comes recommended for those who liked the movie well enough to buy it a second time in 3D. Cast Notes: Mia Wasikowska (Alice), Johnny Depp (Mad Hatter), Helena Bonham Carter (Red Queen), Anne Hathaway (White Queen), Crispin Glover (Stayne), Matt Lucas (Tweedledee / Tweedledum), Stephen Fry (Cheshire Cat [voice]), Michael Sheen (White Rabbit [voice]), Alan Rickman (Blue Caterpillar [voice]), Barbara Windsor (Dormouse [voice]), Paul Whitehouse (March Hare [voice]), Timothy Spall (Bayard [voice]), Marton Csokas (Charles Kingsleigh), Tim Pigott-Smith (Lord Ascot), John Surman (Colleague #1). IMDb Rating (01/01/11): 6.6/10 from 72,241 users
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