If nothing else, director Tim Burton and co-star Johnny Depp seemed to have been born to adapt "Alice in Wonderland," novelist Lewis Carroll's odd masterpiece of dream logic and adolescent angst. As expected, Burton had a great deal of fun recreating the psychedelic landscapes of Alice's journey into a strange world down the rabbit hole, filling the screen with luscious colors and ominous settings.
But even while being a fun and entertaining spectacle, "Alice in Wonderland" offers no real insight into the enigmatic characters that litter the story, making it an incredibly straight-forward and limited experience. Still, "Alice" is a slick, well-made retelling of a story that is a good fit for the new technologies available in computer graphics.
One aspect that Burton does get just right is with his choice for Alice, played here by Mia Wasikowska as a silently disproving girl who is suffocated under the rigid social rules of upper class society. Wasikowska tells more about her character with her eyes than her dialogue and she manages to be rebellious without being condescending. As she attends a party with London's wealthiest citizens, we feel her need to rebel from the dullness of routine within a moribund and predetermined lifestyle.
Only midway through the party does she find out that it is actually in her honor, as a young man of a high rank is to ask for her hand in marriage. Everyone has already decided that she will say yes, mainly because one would have to be a lunatic to decline a proposal from a man with a title in front of his name.
As in many of Burton's movies, most of the adults are coldly pragmatic and unable to understand the importance of something as frivolous as a child's imagination.
Wonderland becomes Alice's escape from logic and from a life that is slowly wearing her down. After stumbling upon the new strange world, suddenly the impossible is possible and Alice is enthralled and bewildered by a life beyond her bland existence in reality.
It's a story that is well-known to those of many different ages, and Burton stays true to the tone of the animated 1951 Disney classic. Once Alice disappears down the hole, the screen comes alive with color and Burton doesn't shy away from the obvious drug allegories, which were instrumental in the 1951 version as well.
In another oddball performance as the Mad Hatter, Depp is both funny and frighteningly bizarre depending on the scene. Depp balances between a child-like mentality and strangely menacing, which captures Lewis' combination of light and dark material that Burton has also been attracted to in many of his movies.
Helena Bonham Carter is also darkly humorous as the evil Red Queen, complete with a sharp tongue and a cool sense of superiority to those around her. Like many of Disney's best villains, she is among the most colorful and interesting characters in the movie. The shady Cheshire Cat (Stephen Fry) also remains as foreboding as he was in the original and it's difficult to say whether he will frighten or interest kids of younger ages.
But as Burton efficiently updates the visual representations of the original "Alice," his film becomes not much more than a glossy version of it. Instead of interpreting the material from a new perspective, as the best remakes tend to do, Burton is content with showing you exactly what you think you're going to see.
This ended up being the main problems with both "The Da Vinci Code" and "Angels & Demons," as director Ron Howard was so literal in his adaptation that it often came off as bland and obvious. Burton also plays it safe and "Alice" ends up largely as an extended version of the preview, which audiences have been exposed to for quite some time by now.
The main concern, though, is its usage of 3-D, which would have been more impressive before the release of "Avatar" but now looks fairly pedestrian. While "Avatar" seamlessly weaved 3-D shots into the plotline, "Alice" has plenty of gratuitous 3-D that is more gimmicky than anything else. This is actually much more of a compliment to "Avatar" than a criticism of "Alice."
Of course, it's also difficult to denounce a movie that does exactly what it promises to do. For kids, it will doubtlessly play as a strange and exciting adventure tale unlike anything they likely have seen before. Adult audiences who enjoyed the original will once again have fun living vicariously through the eyes of Alice as she explores an exciting new world.
But anyone looking for another great 3-D experience or a fresh spin on Lewis' novel won't find what they are looking for, and "Alice" turns out to be a fun experience easily forgotten. Then again, the best dreams usually are.
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June 12, 2026 17:14 ET Major central bank action was the focus this week in economic news. The European Central Bank became the first major central bank to move in response to the rising inflationary pressures in the backdrop of the conflict in the Middle East. In North America, the U.S. inflation and trade data as well as Canada’s central bank decision gained attention. The Chinese trade data was the main news in Asia.