Alice in Wonderland (2010)

This Alice (Mia Wasikowska) is 19 and impossible, walking around without her corset and with dark circles under her eyes (she's one of Burton's regular Goth blondes). She has recurring dreams and spends most of her time imagining and fantasizing.

As the story begins, she is pressured to marry the local doofus Lord Hamish (Leo Bill). When a rabbit in a waistcoat turns up at her would-be engagement party, she follows it. She goes through the familiar "drink me"/"eat me" process and meets all the familiar characters, including Tweedledee and Tweedledum (Matt Lucas), the Dormouse (voiced by Barbara Windsor), the March Hare (voiced by Paul Whitehouse), the Cheshire Cat (voiced by Stephen Fry), the Blue Caterpillar (voiced by Alan Rickman), and the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp).

She doesn't recognize any of them, and most of them claim that she's not the "real Alice." When the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter) sends in her troops and captures the Hatter, Alice decides to rescue him. It turns out that she's destined to fight on the side of the White Queen (Anne Hathaway) and slay the Jabberwocky (envisioned here as a rather typical dragon).

I guess that's it. It's really an underwhelming story, and it doesn't particularly comment on the Wonderland universe, nor does it come to much of a coming-of-age for Alice. It actually has quite a bit in common with Steven Spielberg's 1991 flop Hook. But Burton's vision is in high gear, and there are some dazzling set pieces, not to mention a pair of delightful performances by Depp and Bonham Carter. Some of the effects, including the re-casting of Bonham Carter as a creepy little thing with an enlarged head, are tops.

Timothy Spall and Michael Sheen provide voices, and Crispin Glover (with a digitally elongated body) co-stars as the Red Queen's Knave of Hearts. Disney studio's produced and distributed it, apparently with no concern over stepping on their original animated Alice in Wonderland (1951).