jack

The praise

I saw Alice in Wonderland 3D. I thought it was really good. I expected it to simply be an adaption of the original story, and based on the still pictures I'd seen of it, expected it to be ok, but not really add anything. And Alice, while famous for many reasons, isn't actually that interesting to watch any more, as it's just a random collection of weird things and out-of-date-parodies that are inventive close to our hearts, but no longer really interesting or exciting to watch.

Instead, it's an expansion of the world, asking "suppose there were an interesting and tense world of which a small fraction were comprehended by a six-year-old Alice, what would the rest look like?" Which is generally a disaster of misinterpretation and over-ambition, but Tim Burton does it really, really well. Indeed, after seeing it, I wish more of the original story had appeared in flashbacks.

( Minor spoilers )