As a huge Tim Burton (his more recent films being Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children and Dumbo) fan, I was pretty stoked when he was given the chance to bring Alice in Wonderland to the big screen from Disney. I have always loved Tim Burton’s style and felt he was the right choice to bring a strange pace like Wonderland and its odd characters to life in a live-action movie.
How to Stream or Download Alice in Wonderland
To stream or to download the movie from Amazon Prime, Google Play, or iTunes, click on the Download button located below this review.
The Movie Review
Before we get to the plot, we have to talk about the cast which is fantastic. Mia Wasikowska as Alice and Johnny Depp as Mad Hatter get all of the attention. However, Helena Bonham Carter as the Red Queen, Crispen Glover as The Knave of Heart and Anne Hathaway as The White Queen are just as great in bringing these characters to life.
Alice in Wonderland also has a very impressive voice cast bringing many CG characters to life. The plot of the movie has a young 19-year-old Alice attend a party with her family where she is to be “engaged” to a rather stuffy Lord. She wants none of this and her attention is captured by the White Rabbit and she follows him down the hole into Wonderland, or as the inhabitants call it Underland.
At the start, I felt the movie felt very much like the Disney animated classic and it does have some of the same themes. However, Alice has a sense that she has seen this place before, but she is often told by people like Absalom and the Mouse that she is not “THE” Alice. Alice is there in Wonderland to slay the Jabberwocky and bring peace to Underland by stopping the tyranny of the Red Queen.
I thought that getting to know Alice and seeing her find herself was pretty cool. The Mad Hatter also gets a great deal of attention and finding out about his back story and the way he would just start talking with a Scottish accent was fun stuff. The White Queen is every bit as caring and regal as the Red Queen is obnoxious and mean! So, you want to see the White Queen rule just as much as you want Alice to figure out she is “THE” Alice.
Alice in Wonderland is a very heavy CG movie as you would expect. There are some great sets created here too, but the CG work is so impressive that it is not always easy to tell what is in front of the camera and what is not. This movie is very much a “Tim Burton” movie in the way that it looks and its overall style.
I thought that the movie moved at a very brisk pace. It goes from one action-packed scene to the next and very rarely takes a breath. When it does take a short breath it is always for a good reason. I found the movie to be a great deal of fun and I would say that it is 100 percent worth a watch.
I remember seeing this in 3D when it was first released and it had some great use of 3D. I re-watched this on Disney Plus and while the movie looked fantastic. Yet, I must say that for a movie that was released in 2010 and was a pretty big deal, I am surprised that Disney did not give this the 4K treatment on Disney Plus.
