((Spoiler Alert!))

Favorite Quote:
"Come, come! We simply MUST commence with the slaying and such!"
-The Mad Hatter
(speaking of the Red Queen and said in a cheerful tone and at a tea party, no less)

I have not seen the Disney cartoon of AIW since I was about eight, nor have I ever read the books, so it was with a pretty fresh mind that I went to the Tim Burton remake last weekend. The movie opened last Friday and is the "continuation" of Alice In Wonderland. It answers the question of what would happen if Alice ever grew up and came back to Wonderland. Although it is released by Disney, don't expect too much sugary "cuteness"-Tim Burton definitely leaves his mark on the film by adding a dark element to everything. I really like some of Tim Burton's movies, (Nightmare Before Christmas BABY!! What, What!?!?) so I loved it, but some might find the movie distractingly morbid at times.

The storyline is pretty good, although it moves quickly during the first forty-five minutes: Alice goes to a stuffy aristocratic party, faces a perplexing decision, and then (surprise, surprise) falls down a hole en route to chasing down a white rabbit. She arrives in Wonderland only to be interrogated by the inhabitants over whether she is indeed the RIGHT Alice, finds out that The Red Queen has usurped the crown, and that a "Champion" is coming to slay the "Jabberwocky" and put everything right again. Everything is still as strange and unusual as the first time she was there, it's just now everyone is oppressed and miserable (and wants HER to fix it).

The characters were extremely well-done: the Mad Hatter isn't just a chaotic wacko- he actually has observable motivations and you really feel sorry for him at times. The Red Queen is...well....absolutely terrible, just as she should be. The White Queen was beautiful and graceful, so much so, that it was purposely hilarious at times. And finally, Alice was very well portrayed: I really liked how they showed her as brave and smart, yet not in a feminist kinda way. I especially liked how her suit of armor had a little skirt on it- even though she's kicking butt, she still kept her femininity and the similarity to St. Joan of Arc was striking, at least to me.

There are really only two things I didn't like about the movie: the soundtrack could have been better-it was done by the very talented Danny Elfman (who did an AMAZING job on the soundtrack for The Nightmare Before Christmas) so I was disappointed when there seemed to be a lot of "ripped off" music: there was very Lord of The Rings/Howard Shore-esque music during the climactic last 30 minutes and other parts were strongly similar to the soundtrack for Black Beauty (1994). The other thing that I didn't like was how the proportions seemed to be deliberately off, to the point of being distracting and taking away from the pacing of the movie: The Mad Hatter's eyes were abnormally huge, and the Queen's minion/right hand man's legs were abnormally long and lanky. Although, knowing Tim Burton, I'm sure he did this on purpose. The Red Queen's head was also waayyy out of proportion to her body, but for some reason with her it wasn't annoyingly distracting-I rather marveled each scene at how on earth did they do that? The White Queen was also very distracting but for a slightly different reason: her "cosmetic proportions" were off: dark brown eyebrows with whitish-blonde hair?!? Hello?! Although maybe they had to do that to balance out the PLUM lipstick....she's definitely a Tim Burton heroine. ;)

Anyways, music and proportions aside, I'd say the movie is excellent and definitely worth your money (I saw it twice, and plan to see it again). Although if you are a loyal fan of the books and/or dislike the "artistically morbid" style of Tim Burton you probably won't like it, regardless.

Rating: PG
Run Time: 1 hour, 49 minutes