The Good

This movie lives in a world all its own.

The Bad

Tim Burton hasn't made a really good movie since Big Fish.In Tim Burton's telling of Alice In Wonderland, an older Alice goes back down the rabbit hole so she can find out why she entered this world in the first place. While there she comes across the Mad Hatter, the White Queen, the Red Queen, the White Rabbit and other characters from the original story. What ensues is a tale of Alice progressing beyond her years. As we watch we come to see the original story as a precursor to everything that we have seen and known about this tale.

While I think it is a bit unsettling that this movie is called Alice In Wonderland… it doesn't tell that story. What it does show is something we have known all of our lives, however we get to see it in a completely new way. Alice In Wonderland is a timeless tale and while this movie takes us a little too much into the mind of Tim Burton, I do give it points for at least feigning an attempt at originality.

Features

Wonderland Characters

This section gives users of this Blu-ray disc six featurettes for them to peruse. They are:

- Finding Alice

- The Mad Hatter

- The Futterwacken Dance

- The Red Queen

- Time Lapse: Sculpting The Red Queen

- The White Queen

These sections play as pretty much paint by numbers looks at these characters. We have the actors who embody them - Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter and Anne Hathaway talk about playing these characters, how they have known about them their whole lives, what it's like working with Tim Burton, the process of getting "into" the character, etc. While none of these featurettes are really mind-blowing, they are worth your time if you are a big fan of this movie.

Making Wonderland

Video

1080p High Definition. Special Features: 1080p High Definition. As much as I may not care for how the look of this movie seems to be the movie (it's that style over substance argument), I will say that on Blu-ray disc this thing looks pretty darn awesome. There is a richness to all the images that holds up over the entire viewing experience. All the scenes blend together making this film feel like one that isn't taking place on sets or a soundstage. There is a true richness that is created here that makes this film a smorgasbord of cinema moments. Tim Burton and his Director of Photography Dariusz Wolski have spared no expense in making this movie take place in world that feels very real and alive.

Audio

English 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio (48KHz / 24 Bit). English 2.0 DVS. French and Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound. Subtitles: English SDH, French and Spanish. The audio on this film features that classic Tim Burton sound that we've all come to expect from Danny Elfman. It is big, sounds like an evil circus, and it invades the film at all the right moments. I don't know how I feel about the music (Elfman seems to be making the same soundtrack over and over nowadays), but I will say that things sounded quite good on my player. The audio filled the room and this helped engulf me in the overall Blu-ray D experience.

Package

Alice, The Mad Hatter and the rabbit are presented on this front cover which boasts big mushrooms, large insects and a castle far off in the distance. The back gives us a bunch of characters from this film, a Special Features listing for all three discs in this set (one Blu-ray disc, one DVD and one digital copy for your PC or portable device), a description of this movie, technical specs, and a credits list. All in all, this movie looks and feels like a Disney production.

Final Word

Ultimately this movie was better than I expected it would be, I guess my main problem is that Tim Burton seems to be doing bad remakes of good material.

Alice in Wonderland was released March 3, 2010.