Film File - Alice in Wonderland

For Alice Kingsleigh (Mia Wasikowska), life became a magical adventure that began with a hole in a garden. When the dull but worthy Hamish (Leo Bill), son of Lord Ascot (Tim Pigott Smith), proposes to Alice during a Victorian garden party thrown in their honour, she faces the dilemma many a woman has encountered. But instead of giving an answer, she flees, heading off after a rabbit she's spotted running across the lawn. No plain garden variety rabbit here - this one's wearing a waistcoat and pocket watch. Following the White Rabbit (Michael Sheen) across a meadow, Alice watches as he disappears into a rabbit hole, and suddenly finds herself falling down after him, tumbling through a strange, dreamlike passage before landing in a round hall with many doors. She discovers a bottle labelled 'Drink Me', whose contents shrink her, and a cake with the words 'Eat Me' which makes her grow. Alice is in Underland - the same place she visited in her dreams as a young girl. There she meets a menagerie of colourful characters, including a swashbuckling Dormouse (Barbara Windsor), a Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp), a grinning Cheshire Cat (Stephen Fry), a wise caterpillar called Absolem (Alan Rickman), a White Queen (Anne Hathaway) and her spiteful older sister, the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter), who happens to be the petulant ruler of Underland. Add in Tweeddale (Matt Lucas), Knave of Hearts (Crispin Glover) and the March Hare (Paul Whitehouse), and the stage is set for a very different fairytale to the one you heard as a child. It is, after all, director Tim Burton at the helm. Originally published in 1865, Lewis Carroll's iconic tale changed the course of children's literature - and for director Burton, the prospect of being able to put his own fresh spin on such a timeless classic as this was impossible to resist. With the success of his first book, Carroll - the pen name for Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a lecturer in mathematics at Christchurch University in Oxford - became the leading children's author of his day. He followed it six years later with 'Through The Looking-Glass', and 'What Alice Found There', which was even more popular than its predecessor. Today, both books are usually published together under the title 'Alice In Wonderland', with their continued influence seen in everything from music videos to films, comics, computer games, opera and art. "It somehow taps a subconscious thing," says Burton of his source material. "That's why all those great stories stay around because they tap into the things that people probably aren't even aware of on a conscious level." Re-imagined by Linda Woolverton, who co-wrote 'The Lion King', the film is trademark Burton, a gothic fairytale filled with macabre sets and characters perfect for his enjoyably twisted imagination. While he does keep the main cast intact, including a hookah-smoking caterpillar, the scene-stealing Cheshire Cat, a completely over the top Red Queen, and a Mad Hatter with the emphasis hugely on mad, missing in action are Mock Turtle, Gryphon, Lobster Quadrille, and the famous cry of the White Rabbit "I'm late!". Similarly, the White Queen doesn't say: "Jam tomorrow and jam yesterday - but never jam today." Playing up the relationship between Alice and the Mad Hatter - a strange union given extra depth by Burton - the story has all the attractions that made the original such a timeless tale, but added to by many a modern angle that should work wonders for the short attention span of today's youthful audience. Glorious colour, a sharp script, a first-rate cast and the steady hand of a director perfectly at home in his own particular wonderland make this an Alice that should bring in the crowds.