What Do The Critics Say?

"Two childlike anarchists with a fine disdain for narrative structure, Burton and Carroll on paper look like a perfect match. But despite touches of brilliance, this Alice in Wonderland is more a corporate product than a personal statement. Though the rote fantasy plot holds little interest, visually Burton remains at the top of his game, aided by Colleen Atwood's witty costumes, Robert Stromberg's evocative production design, and the work of countless gifted animators. 3 STARS." Jake Wilson THE AGE "Burton and his screenwriter, Linda Woolverton, have taken a twisted tale and twisted it some more to create an astonishing and magical movie full of surprises and fantastic characters." Pete Hammond BOXOFFICE "The disappointment is that Burton's visual firepower and vivid characterization [are] being used in the service of a narrative that grows increasingly one-dimensional and simple-minded. By the final showdown, we could be back in the world of Oz or in the latest Narnia adventure." Geoffrey Macnab LONDON INDEPENDENT "The look of the film is terrific, and Colleen Atwood's costumes are a delight. Atwood has won two Oscars already, for "Chicago "and "Memoirs Of A Geisha". These are her finest yet. Is Alice in Wonderland worth seeing? Yes, because it's a feast for the eyes. But the story needed to be more imaginative and involving for this to become a massive hit, and it's not obvious whether it's aimed at children or adults. Tim Burton fails to pull a rabbit out of his hat. 3 STARS." Chris Tookey UK DAILY MAIL "In theory, the combination of Lewis Carroll’s widely popular novels, imagist Tim Burton as director, Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter, and innovative 3D technology spells magic for Disney’s new version of "Alice in Wonderland", and in individual sequences, the movie soars to Hollywood’s highest level of creativity. And yet something is missing to make this rendition a truly exciting and memorable artistic experience: call it heart and gravity. Always a master of brilliant visual set-pieces, Burton, no matter who he collaborates with as a scribe, is not a narrative storyteller in the conventional sense of the term." Emanuel Levy EMANUEL LEVY

"Climactic action setpiece, with an unlikely young warrior taking on a fearsome beast while gobs of CGI soldiers clash, smacks of "The Lord of the Rings," "Harry Potter," "The Golden Compass," "The Chronicles of Narnia" and any number of other such recent ventures. To be sure, the design, effects, makeup and technical work is of a high order. Other than Alice, the most memorable characters are the wonderful hunting dog Bayard and the elusive Cheshire Cat, superbly voiced by Timothy Spall and Stephen Fry, respectively. "You've lost your muchness," Johnny Depp's Mad Hatter remarks to his newly shrunken teenage friend, and much the same could be said of Tim Burton in the wake of his encounter with a Victorian-era heroine of imaginative powers even wilder than his own." Tod McCarthy VARIETY "Alice in Wonderland is a fun ride that you wouldn’t mind getting on once, but you’d hold off until the DVD to get on again. The performances are great, the music is fantastic, the visuals are polished, but the story is essentially the same. It’s the same Alice she’s just in a new outfit. But even though it’s not the greatest movie it’s still worth a viewing. Unlike most films that come out these days, the 3D element wasn’t the biggest selling point for Alice. It’s there, it’s present, but it’s not overwhelming." Krystal Clark SCREENCRAVE "While Alice in Wonderland generally dodges the indulgent pratfalls of several recent Burton films, there are still a few thorns that stuck out. Of these, the most incongruous was the inclusion of a baffling (and mercifully short-lived) dance sequence at the end of the film. At times, the plotting also feels rushed: perhaps as a result of tight editing to keep the runtime to a family-friendly length. Similarly the choice of Avril Lavigne's pop tune as the opening track of the end credits is bafflingly at odds with the mostly excellent Danny Elfman score. The transparent product licensing pulls the rug out from under Alice at the finish line." Patrick Kolan IGN AU "It should have been a case of a marriage made in heaven for the new fantasy blockbuster "Alice In Wonderland". While Wasikowska aquits herself brilliantly as Alice, the film often struggles to capture the right airs of wonder and magic that are key to her character's adventures. Overall, "Alice In Wonderland" works best when addressed as a throwaway eyepopper. The disappointment is that it could have been so much more. Leigh Paatsch HIT LITFOUT

The Making Of Alice In Wonderland For Tim Burton, whose work has frequently dealt with dual worlds and always celebrated the outsider, the prospect of being able to put his own fresh spin on such a timeless classic as "Alice In Wonderland" was impossible to pass up. "It’s so much a part of the culture," he reflects of Carroll’s tale that has inspired numerous stage, television and film adaptations down the years, including Disney’s much-loved 1951 animated feature. "But as a movie, I’ve never seen a version I’ve really liked. It’s always been about a passive little girl wandering around a series of adventures with weird characters. There’s never any kind of gravity to it. So that’s the attempt with this, to take the idea of those stories and shape them into something that’s not literal from the book but keeps the spirit of it." Incorporating characters, story elements and the central themes from both of Carroll’s books, Burton’s "Alice In Wonderland" is an entirely new story, with Wasikowska’s Alice returning to Wonderland for the first time since she was a child although having no memory of her previous adventures there. Part of what appealed to Burton in Woolverton’s script was that it centred on an Alice who, at nineteen, was not only substantially older than in Carroll’s books, but who also felt both real and identifiable. "Everyone has their idea of Alice, and it was important to take away the baggage and make her as real a teenager as possible, but also keep some of the original aspects of her character,” says Wasikowska. "It’s exciting to bring those characters and stories to another generation." As Alice undergoes her latest trip through Wonderland, the shy, self-conscious girl at the start of the film, is transformed into a strong, confident young woman. "In the beginning, Alice is very awkward and uncomfortable in her skin," Wasikowska ("Rogue" & "Defiance") continued. "So her experience in Wonderland is her reconnecting with herself and finding herself again, and finding she has the strength to be more self-assured and figure out what she wants." Playing such an iconic role as Alice was a dream come true for the Australian-born actress, although she admits to feeling a little intimidated at first. "There’s a lot of pressure in a way," she notes. "Everyone thinks they know who she is, and you can’t please everyone. So the hardest thing is making her your own, and making yourself comfortable with her and confident in the decisions you make." "I just liked her quality,"says Burton of his teenage star who underwent four auditions before winning the part. "I always like it when I sense people have that old soul quality to them. Because you’re witnessing this whole thing through her eyes, it needed somebody who can subtly portray that." For a fabulist filmmaker renowned for creating fantastical and breathtakingly elaborate worlds, Carroll’s rich tapestry of bizarre characters and their magical world afforded Burton ample opportunity to run wild with his imagination, putting his own, indelible Burton-esque stamp on the material. "What’s amazing about Carroll’s books is that his imagery is so strong," says Wasikowka. "Which is kind of why it’s so exciting that Tim is doing it because he’s such a visual person. The two of them together is really exciting." "I’m a huge fan of the book," says Johnny Depp, who plays the Mad Hatter. "It’s such a beast in terms of invention, of literary achievement. It’s as brilliant and as fresh and as new and as interesting today as it was then." The thing about Wonderland, like any fairy tale land, there’s good and the bad," Burton muses. "The thing I liked about Wonderland is that everything is slightly off, even the good people. That to me is something different." With the success of "Alice", Carroll (the pen name for Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a lecturer in mathematics at Christchurch University in Oxford, England) became the leading children’s author of his day, and he followed it six years later with "Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There," which was even more popular than its predecessor. Today, both these books tend to be published together under the title "Alice in Wonderland", and their continued influence can be seen in everything from music videos to films, comic books to computer games, opera to art. "One of the reasons why Lewis Carroll’s characters work so well in cinema is because they’re wildly imaginative and there’s no one way to interpret them," says 2008 NBR Award winner Anne Hathaway ("Rachel Getting Married"), who plays the White Queen. "Because Lewis Carroll played around with words and concepts, and because the characters appeal to the imagination, I feel there are as many interpretations as there are imaginations in the world. It depends on what your take is." Incorporating characters, story elements and central themes from Carroll’s books, Burton's "Alice in Wonderland" takes the stories to new heights, so to speak, featuring a grown-up Alice as she returns to the place she visited as a child. Screenwriter Linda Woolverton ("Mulan") pitched the idea to producers Joe Roth ("Hellboy 2: The Golden Army") and 2002 Independent Spirit Award winners Suzanne and Jennifer Todd ("Memento"). "Linda came up with a great idea," says Roth. "It all hangs together, kind of a political allegory: those residents down there are not just crazy, they’re actually revolutionaries. So it just struck me right on every single level, and Disney seemed like the right place to take it. And there was only one choice of director, Tim Burton ("Ed Wood'), and lo and behold, he wanted to do it." 2006 British Animation Award winner Burton ("Corpse Bride") recalls: "They gave me a script and they said 3D. And even before I read it. I thought that's intriguing, and what I liked about Linda's script was she made it a story, gave it a shape for a movie that’s not necessarily the book. So all those elements seemed good to me." "The story takes place when Alice is nineteen, and she’s about to enter into a marriage she’s not sure about," Woolverton ("The Lion King" 1994 & "Arctic Tale" 2007) explained. "Time has passed. The Red Queen rules the whole land. It’s under her thumb. And the people of Underland need Alice. Underland is the same fantastical land that Alice visited as a child. But she misheard the word 'Underland' and thought they said 'Wonderland'. Now as a girl on the cusp of adulthood, Alice goes back and there she discovers that the real name of the world is Underland." According to Woolverton, Underland has come upon hard times since the malevolent Red Queen has taken over the throne. It is, however, a truly wonderful land, which might explain why the girl who mistook it for 'Wonderland' has been called upon to help return it to its glory. But, says Woolverton, "Underland has always been Underland since the Beginning, no matter who sits on the throne. It will remain Underland until the End." "What Linda has done is fashion a story with an emotional context for the film’s events to occur," says Bonham Carter who reunites with her "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" co-star Depp. "In this, there’s a point to the whole story and a journey for Alice." "Tim Burton is, in his own way, a modern-day Walt Disney," says Todd. "There’s no one else like him." "Tim Burton, Johnny Depp, Disney and 3D make this an irresistible and 'must see' movie event," says producer Richard Zanuck. When it came to casting the role of Alice, filmmakers sought fresh talent. "We saw an enormous amount of actors from all over the world," Zanuck (2002's "Road to Perdition") recalls. "Everybody wanted to play this part." "It’s not a silly Alice. It’s not a frivolous Alice. It’s not a fly by night Alice," says Todd. "There’s a real weight to the character." "Mia’s incredible," says eight time People's Choice USA Award winner, Depp. "She’s like this wonderful little being from another planet. For me, it was great working with Mia who is beautiful, wonderful, sweet: the perfect Alice." "Alice In Wonderland" marks the seventh collaboration between Tim Burton and Depp since they first worked together on "Edward Scissorhands". "It’s amazing," says Depp, "having worked with Tim coming up on twenty years, I’ve had the opportunity to see him grow. He’s so unique and so special and such a brilliant filmmaker. Anything Tim wants me to do is a real honor." Playing The Hatter offered Depp the opportunity to create yet another unique character. “It was a real challenge to find something different, to define the Mad Hatter in terms of cinema," Depp ("Once Upon a Time in Mexico") says. "He has an ability for transformation that is fabulous," says Zanuck, who won the 1990 Oscar for "Driving Miss Daisy" and in 1991 was the recipient of the Academy's Irving G Thalberg Memorial Award. “There’s no one who can do these crazy, offbeat, eccentric characters like Johnny can. He has a way of being funny and crazy, yet poignant. He’s one of the world’s great actors; he takes bigger chances than any other male star." To play Underland’s petulant ruler, the Red Queen, Burton turned to his real life partner, 2000 and 2009 Empire Award UK winner Helena Bonham Carter. "She doesn’t really rule through any kind of justice or fairness, but through terror," says Bonham Carter. "I chop off people’s heads. That’s my solution to everything." While Bonham Carter’s head is digitally increased to around twice its normal size for the final film, the actress still had to endure a daily visit to the makeup chair to be transformed into the Red Queen. "It took about three hours. But I love being Royal. The big hazard was I lost my voice pretty much every day by ten o’clock, because she shouts a lot. 'Off with his head! Off with her head!' It’s quite exhausting losing your temper all the time." In contrast, Mirana the White Queen, younger sister of the Red Queen, is mild mannered and kind; with a hidden dark side. Anne Hathaway says she had to find a way to capture the character’s layered personality. "When I was trying to work her out, I kept saying to myself, 'she is a punk-rock, vegan pacifist.' So I listened to a lot of Blondie, I watched a lot of Greta Garbo movies, and I looked at a lot of the artwork of Dan Flavin. Then a little bit of Norma Desmond got thrown in there, too. And she just kind of emerged."Hathaway even moves like a subdued royal figure. "I noticed the more languid I could make my arms, the more it looked like I was gliding." "It’s like she’s on wheels," Depp notes. "She sort of glides through, and her hands begin talking before she does. Her hands have their own little personality." To play Ilosovic Stayne, the Red Queen’s duplicitous, one-eyed Knave of Hearts, Burton turned to Crispin Glover, an actor, filmmaker, musician and author. "I first met him in the early 1980s," says Burton. "He’s a very unique individual." Two of Carroll’s most lovable creations are the rotund twin brothers, Tweedledee and Tweedledum. Matt Lucas, who voices both characters admits: "I made them quite child-like, which does come naturally to me, because I’m a big kid anyway." The Storyline

For teenager Alice Kingsley, life is about take a turn for the unexpected. Proposed to by Hamish, the worthy but dull son of Lord and Lady Ascot, during a Victorian garden party thrown in her honor, Alice excuses herself without giving an answer, heading off after a rabbit wearing a waistcoat and a pocket watch she’s spotted running across the lawn. Following the White Rabbit across a meadow, Alice watches as he disappears into a rabbit hole at the base of a tree. Suddenly, while leaning perilously closer to peer into the hole, she finds herself tumbling into a strange, dreamlike passage, before landing with a resounding thud in a round hall with many doors. After a spot of bother, Alice eventually finds her way through a door into a wondrous and fantastical world known to its inhabitants as 'Underland'. It's not the 'wonderland' she expected. This is a troubled land ruled by an evil Red Queen.

The Verdict "I remember someone saying that childrens fairy tales were in many instances quite dark and terrifying, but for the life of me, I can't remember ever associating that with the timeless Lewis Caroll (27/1/1832 – 14/1/1898) classic: "Alice In Wonderland" which was originally published (with illustrations by Sir John Tenniel) in 1865 as "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland". So why would Walt Disney Pictures want to put their name on such a dark version of what was many believe is a wonderful, bright tale? The answer lies in Caroll's second book, the sequel: "Through the Looking-Glass And What Alice Found There", a darker tale which was published in 1871. Darker, because at the time, the author was suffering from depression, brought on by the death of his father in 1868. 2010's "Alice In Wonderland" combines both books into one very, very dark storyline. And, with Tim Burton helming the production, you'd be right to expect the film would be a dark tale. Personally, as a big fan of Burton's I am disappointed. I believe "Alice In Wonderland" will be seen as one of his lesser works. Despite the fact that there's lots to like visually, there isn't much to love in Burton and screenwriter Linda Woolverton's 'bi-polar' take on the classic tale that many children grew up on. This is an almost lifeless film: one which won't warrant a second visit. It's not hard to imagine that the storyline could have only come about by throwing both books into a black hole and then waiting to see what pops out the other side. Even the title "Alice In Wonderland" is a misnomer. Worth seeing for the delightful performance of Mia Wasikowska (pronounced vash-i-kov-ska) who I'm sure many will agree looks somewhat like a young Cate Blanchett; the myriad of CGI and SFX, plus the magic of 3D. 3 STARS." Who's Playing Who?

Johnny Depp Mia Wasikowska Helena Bonham Carter Anne Hathaway Crispin Glover Matt Lucas Stephen Fry Christopher Lee Michael Sheen Alan Rickman Barbara Windsor Paul Whitehouse Timothy Spall Marton Csokas Tim Pigott-Smitht Lindsay Duncan Geraldine James Leo Bill Frances de la Tour Jemma Powell John Hopkins Eleanor Gecks Eleanor Tomlinson

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Mad Hatter Alice Red Queen White Queen Knave of Hearts Tweedledee/Tweedledum Cheshire Cat Jabberwocky White Rabbit Blue Caterpillar Dormouse March Hare Bayard Charles Kingsleigh Lord Ascot Lady Ascot Helen Kingsleigh Hamish Aunt Imogene Margaret Kingsleigh Lowell Faith Chattaway Fiona Chattaway

The Production Team

Director Screenplay Adapted Producers Original Music D.O.P. Film Editor Casting Production Designer Costume Designer

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Tim Burton Linda Woolverton from the Lewis Carroll books "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" "Through the Looking Glass" Tim Burton/Joe Roth/Jennifer Todd/Suzanne Todd Danny Elfman Dariusz Wolski Chris Lebenzon Susie Figgis Robert Stromberg Colleen Atwood

Run Time 108 minutes Rated PG [AUST] Copyright ©2010 - Disney Films - All Rights Reserved ©1999-2010 The Movie Pages & impact Internet Services. All Rights Reserved. Protected by Australian and International Copyright. Trademark Laws and Intellectual Property Rights apply.