Alice in Wonderland Review

Johnny Depp and Tim Burton reteam once again – this time it's for an adaptation of Lewis Carroll's Alice In Wonderland. Mia Wasikowska is 19 year old Alice, a girl who's facing the possibility of being married off to a man she doesn't love and on the verge of enduring a life she really doesn't want. As she runs off to consider the proposal, she falls down a rabbit hole and finds herself in Wonderland. However, on her entrance to Wonderland, she finds she has a destiny to fulfill – she must free the land from the tyranny of the Red Queen (Helena Bonham-Carter) and restore happiness to the land she visited as a child in her dreams. But with the Red Queen on the war path, and the evil Jabberwocky to be unleashed, it looks like Alice really has her work cut out.

Like Hook, Alice in Wonderland sees an older version of a classic character returning to old haunts and meeting up with old friends. For some reason the Alice in Wonderland script, by Linda Woolverton, keeps Alice utterly in the dark for the entire film. We know that she's been to Wonderland before, the other characters know it, but bafflingly she doesn't. And when she does remember, right at the end, it's presented as some kind of big reveal. Huh? What makes it all the weirder is that the movie doesn't always feel like a sequel to Lewis Carroll's original work but some kind of weird echo, or a reboot. Characters drop famous audience identification lines from the original books, and they engage in activities that we recognize from previous adaptations, but these lines and these activities don't seem to have a place here; they're the Alice equivalent of a franchise throwing insipid fan service in the sixth film – a wink at the people who have been here all along…read more [CHUD]

There are two rules to most things in life. Good things come to those who wait, and it's not what you know it's who you know. Both of these fit perfectly into my early reviewing of Tim Burton's latest money-spinner, his take on Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. Thanks to a connection in cinema, who shall forever remain nameless and something of a mythical hero to my world, and being able to wait for a couple of days rather than bothering them every ten minutes with calls and texts, I managed to get an advanced screening of what is surely one of Burton's most anticipated films ever. Many people are probably most coherent to the world of Wonderland through the previous Disney effort, 1951's cartoon feature, which combined elements of Carroll's original Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass to come up with a child friendly mishmash that became one of the best known adaptations…read more [NewsBlaze]

To dispense with the obvious: Tim Burton's new Disney movie is not Lewis Carroll's masterpiece of dream illogic, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, but more of a C. S. Lewis Carroll Alice in Narnia with your horror host Johnny Depp. In Burton's Alice in Wonderland, characters, tropes, and actual verses of Alice's Adventures … and its sequel, Through the Looking-Glass, are folded into an action-fantasy in which the 19-year-old Alice (in her second plunge down the rabbit hole) must prove her mettle by rising up on the frabjous day and slaying the Jabberwock (“Callooh! Callay!”), thereby saving “Underland” (allegedly the subterranean kingdom's real name) from the nasty Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter). The Reverend Charles Dodgson's deliciously maddening satire of English manners and pedantry is now fodder for noisy chases, thwacking battles with CGI beasties, and a smug framing story in which Alice (Mia Wasikowska) must decide at a garden party before sundry members of the aristocracy whether to accept an offer of marriage from a profoundly unattractive prig or follow in the madcap footsteps of her late father…read more [New York Magazine] Helena Bonham Carter as The Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland Tim Burton falls down the rabbit hole as he re-visions Lewis Carroll's classic novel. This is Alice with extra Burton flourish. The story takes place some years later than the original, with a decidedly more grown-up Alice (Mia Wasikowska). She is19-years-old, stubborn, grieving for the death of her idealistic and inspirational father and about to receive a marriage proposal from someone she most definitely doesn't want to marry. When summoned to take a stroll in the garden with the bossy Lady Ascot (Geraldine James), who is trying to push her into marriage, Alice gets distracted by a white rabbit and runs after it. Having chased it to the rabbit hole, she promptly falls in…read more [Love Film] Alice in Wonderland Wallpaper

It all seemed like such a natural fit — Burton and Lewis Carroll, Depp as the key component in fiction's most eccentric tea party, and 3D put at the service of a story offering unlimited visual possibilities. Not that it's gone all wrong; not entirely. But for all its clever design, beguiling creatures and witty actors, the picture feels far more conventional than it should; it's a Disney film illustrated by Burton, rather than a Burton film that happens to be released by Disney…read more [Variety] Alice in Wonderland – Helena Bonham Carter (The Red Queen) Never have toves been so slithy or a film so brillig. Tim Burton's spectacular reimagining of Alice in Wonderland, which had its royal premiere in London last night, takes Lewis Carroll's famous Jabberwocky poem and makes it a 3-D epic for the next generation. Traditionalists may quibble with Burton's Gothic ride through the Alice books, but his hallucinogenic humour is true to the originals. Plus you don't get a cast any better than this. The standouts are Helena Bonham Carter as the Red Queen with a bulbous head and a venomous tongue, using a live pig as a footstool, and Alice herself, played by the Australian actress Mia Wasikowska with frowning confidence and not a drop of soppiness…read more [TimesOnline.co.uk] Alice in Wonderland Video review [New Orleans Movie News] Generally speaking, you know what you'll get with a Tim Burton movie. There will be wonderful sets and cinematography for sure; quirky dialogue almost certainly and Johnny Depp and/or Helena Bonham Carter without doubt. Throw in some 3D trickery and we are left with a film that fans of Burton will love and everyone else won't hate. Lewis Carroll's tale of Alice in Wonderland is one that has been delighting children for generations. Under Burton's eye it has been given a new lease of life as the original story is mixed with Alice Through the Looking Glass to give a film that contains the best of both magical worlds…read more [Talk Talk] Matt Lucas as Tweedledee / Tweedledum in Alice in Wonderland Not that there was any doubt that, when it came to restaging the 1865 Lewis Carroll classic for a 21st century sensibility, Tim Burton would be the man for the job. But even the filmmaker's trademark winsomely outlandish style doesn't prepare you for the thoroughly enjoyable spectacle that is his “Alice in Wonderland.” A fantastical romp that proves every bit as transporting as that movie about the blue people of Pandora, his “Alice” is more than just a gorgeous 3D sight to behold. Armed with a smartly reshaped but still reverential script by Linda Woolverton (“Beauty and the Beast,” “The Lion King”), Burton has delivered a subversively witty, brilliantly cast, whimsically appointed dazzler that also manages to hit all the emotionally satisfying marks…read more [THR]

Leaving the screening of Alice in Wonderland, one of my only thoughts was that no one but Tim Burton could have made this movie. I am not a huge fan of the 1951 Disney animated classic, it is a bit too strange although I understand that was the entire point of the story to begin with. I often thought that the animators and writers had to be on some serious drugs to make that movie. Well, that entire thought process fits in well with Burton's style of filmmaking and, if nothing else, the movie is almost a “Tim Burton's Greatest Hits” film….read more [411mania]

Alice in Wonderland World Preimere Live stream

Watch the live stream from London's Leicester Square of the Royal World Premiere. You can see exclusive access all areas footage, including interviews with Alice in Wonderland's all-star cast as they walk the red carpet; from Johnny Depp (the Mad Hatter), Anne Hathaway (the White Queen), Helena Bonham Carter (the Red Queen), Australian rising-star Mia Wasikowska (Alice), and UK comedian Matt Lucas (Tweedledum and Tweedledee) to the film's director Tim Burton.