Review:
Alice in Wonderland

Plot:

A 19 year old Alice is poised to be engaged to a snobby upperclass Englishman. In hesitation to make her decision, she runs away, following a white rabbit that seems to be leading her through the wood. She finds her way to a hole, which she (ungracefully) falls into, landing herself in Wonderland. There, she is reunited with her friends and must fight to dethrone the Red Queen and give the throne back to the Red Queen's more benevolent and younger sister, the White Queen.

Review:

Despite being unable to see Alice in 3D, I must say I was definitely both impressed and left with a sour taste in my mouth at the same time. Alice in Wonderland is one of my favorite childhood movies. The notion that you can be wisked away into a magical world filled with talking creatures and an insane Matriarch always captivated me as a child. Now, years later, Tim Burton takes his hand at this classic. Before seeing the movie, I had my suspicions. I was thoroughly unimpressed by Burton's adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, so I was curious to see how he'd handle this one.

The bottom line is, some things he hit right on target, whereas other things he simply aimed too high for. To get them out of the way, I'll discuss the fallacies in Alice first.

In the movie, Alice falls into Wonderland after being very reluctant to marry a snooty young man. Upon his marriage proposal, Alice catches the white rabbit out of the corner of her eye, and decides to follow him. This of course leads her to the rabbit hole that ends up warping her back to Wonderland. Since Alice was in Wonderland as a child, you would think she would have memory of this world. In fact, she used to tell her father stories of Wonderland all the time. Well...sadly, Alice suffers some sort of amnesia, forgetting all of Wonderland despite the fact that everyone she used to know still remembers her.

And in leiu of all of this, Alice doesn't seem phased by the curious properties of Wonderland. She is shrunk, grown to gigantic proportions, shrunk again, thrown around in the Mad Hatter's hat, and doesn't really seem bothered by any of this. It's all curious and wonderful to her.