Alice in Wonderland

First published in 1865, Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is a droll but disturbing sociopolitical parody disguised as a surreal children's fantasy about a precocious child wandering through weird environments and meeting bizarre characters. This fanciful adaptation directed by Tim Burton (also incorporating Carroll's sequel, Through the Looking-Glass) finds 19-year-old Alice Kingsleigh (Mia Wasikowska) being courted by a priggish aristocrat at a Victorian garden party, where she impulsively darts away and tumbles down a rabbit hole into a hallucinatory realm that is vaguely familiar to her from (what she believes were) childhood dreams. After following the White Rabbit (voiced by Michael Sheen), confronting Tweedledum/Tweedledee (Matt Lucas), and consulting the Blue Caterpillar (voiced by Alan Rickman) and the disembodied Cheshire Cat (voiced by Stephen Fry), Alice is befriended by the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp, in a fascinating performance), who remembers her earlier visit as a child and helps her to meet her destiny as the champion of the saintly White Queen (Anne Hathaway) by slaying the ferocious Jabberwocky dragon (voiced by Christopher Lee) dispatched by the despotic Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter). Alice in Wonderland effectively combines an action-driven girl-power narrative with spectacular CGI-enhanced landscapes, and while not all will be entranced by Burton's vision, many will enjoy. Recommended. [Note: DVD/Blu-ray extras include behind-the-scenes and character featurettes on “Effecting Wonderland” (7 min.), “The Mad Hatter” (6 min.), and “Finding Alice” (5 min.), and trailers. Exclusive to the three-disc Blu-ray release is a “Wonderland Characters” section with featurettes on Alice, the Mad Hatter, the White Queen, a time-lapse segment on sculpting the Red Queen, and the Futterwacken Dance (28 min. total), as well as a “Making Wonderland” section with six production featurettes on topics including the score, visual effects, stunts, and props (20 min.). The Blu-ray edition also includes the BD-Live function, plus bonus DVD and digital copies of the film. Bottom line: a solid extras package for Burton's blockbuster remake.] (S. Granger)