Alice in Wonderland

Tim Burton's version of Alice in Wonderland opened this weekend. Of course Wes and I wanted to go see it this weekend, but in no way were we going to see it on Friday night. Found out later that Friday night was a mad house at the theatre. So we went Saturday early afternoon where a lot of shows were still close to selling out. I didn't realize until a few days before we went to go see it that it wasn't a remake of the Disney classic, but was actually the story of Alice going back to Wonderland many years later. I think with that in mind, it made the movie much more enjoyable. (I heard a lot of people didn't like it because they weren't aware that it wasn't a remake of the Disney cartoon.)

So of course we saw it in 3D and like Avatar, the scenery was incredible. We were discussing it later, and came to the conclusion that for any 3D movie to be entertaining, the movie should have some sort of fantastical element to it. The plot was not super engaging, as it took Alice the better part of the movie to realize why she was back in Wonderland. But the characters were fantastic. Johnny Depp was the Mad Hatter and did a great job playing a crazy, quirky guy - as usual. (There was a hint of Jack Sparrow that I saw.) Helena Bonham Carter was great as the Red Queen and I actually really enjoyed Anne Hathaway as the White Queen. The actress who played Alice also did a great job I thought. All the classic characters are there, which made me want to watch the old Disney movie to refresh my memory.

The movie wasn't as dark as a Tim Burton movie generally is. Maybe that's because it was a Disney movie. However, people going into this movie expecting the Disney cartoon will find it much darker. Maybe a tween and up movie, but definitely not a kids movie (saw some at the theatre). Overall a pretty good movie. Definitely worth seeing in the theatre and in 3D. If you're not going to watch it in 3D, you could probably just wait for the video. But you'd be missing out.