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Hatter with the White Queens army

Two of my favourite Hollywood stars join forces resulting in the magic that is bound to happen when auteur Tim Burton asks Johnny Depp to be Hatter in a remake of Alice in Wonderland.

And happen it did, for me at least. I thought this was a slice of pure Burton genius.

Like so many films today it is an original retelling of the story in a new way. Alice has returned after many years and facing a huge challenge in the proposal by Lord Twat (my name for him at least) she chases the Rabbit in a waistcoat down a hole and finds Wonderland in terrible trouble once again.

The story is quite simple but has some lovely tweaks and for me was just adorable enough to forgive any misgivings and just go with it.

The Red Queen interrogates the Frogs

As with Avatar, Burton has chosen to use the 3D to effect the depth of field rather than produce gob smacking eye poking special effects and while I enjoyed it I still find the technology leaves me a little sore in the retina. I don’t like the shooting out of the screen effect  used in Final Destination and Burton has chosen to go the depth of field but I am not sure it really adds a whole bunch that I can’t live without.

Johnny Depp is simply amazing as the Mad Hatter and Mia Wasikoska does an amazing job of being Alice while looking remarkably like one of my least favourite actors Gwyneth Paltrow.  Depp manages to appear completely insane and flicks in and out of a confusing angry Scottish character that I am not quite sure was supposed to mean and left me feeling slightly threatened by him but at the same time enamored by his utter insanity.

The language is hilarious and Helen Bonham-Carter is unbelievably horrid as the Red Queen, I truly despised her Bellatrix character in the Harry Potter films, as you are supposed to, but here it is hard to hate her when she is simply far to freakish to

Alice finds herself back in Wonderland

believe in the first place. With her bulbous head and heart shaped lipstick complete with a fiery temper as she demands her ‘fat boys’ come and amuse her with she rests her weary feet on a warm pigs belly, I was in stitches and unable to breathe let alone dislike her.

But it is none of these characters that truly stole my heart. One character stood out so much more than the rest as the most adorable, lovely and simply divine - Cheshire Cat.

What Burton and Disney have done here is to create Cheshire in the exact way my imagination created him when I first read the character. An unbelievably wide grin full of razor sharp teeth a big grey moggy who can evaporate at will and vaporise back wherever he sees fit to, Cheshire steals the show over and over. The magic used to create him, whilst clearly all CGI brings to life the floating roaming smokey unruly and uncontrollable cat from my imagination. I will no doubt watch this movie over and again simply to study the cat more closely; he is simply brilliant.

My absolute favourite, the Cheshire Cat floating around

The other characters are all good, the smokey dulcet tones of Alan Rickman as the Blue Caterpillar, the ‘Thin Man’ Crispin Glover as Stayne who has this very strange gait that is neither real nor CGI but a clever blend of the two, the crazy Rabbit in the kitchen, they all worked harmoniously for me to create a true Alice in Wonderland experience that I think only cements Burton as a true auteur. You can see from the moment it starts this is Burton and why would you want anyone else to do such a film?

For my money, worth every cent.

All images courtesy of IMDB 201o. Sourced 07/03/10: http://www.imdb.com/media/rm1346998016/tt1014759