I just saw Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland today, and much like the Sherlock Holmes movie some months ago, it’s not part of the canon, although it does borrow much of Lewis Carroll’s Alice is 19, doesn’t remember any of her “Wonderland” adventures, and falls down the rabbit hole again as she flees from a marriage proposal from the foppish Hamish. Alice must fulfill the prophecy in the oraculum and slay the Jabberwocky to save Underland from the evil Red Queen.
Like all Tim Burton Films, it’s a visual spectacle, and I credit him that. I liked the Cheshire Cat, the Blue Caterpillar (Alan Rickman!), and the Red Queen, not so much the jaded Alice, the depressing Mad Hatter (as much as I love Johnny Depp, I don’t like his Wonka and his Mad Hatter and they both seem like the same eerie caricatures on crack), or the hammed up White Queen. With this grown up version of Alice, I missed the heart and whimsicality of the original Alice, and I wouldn’t trade that for all the visual effects in the world.