Alice has decidedly mixed feelings about her original trip down the rabbit hole, but begins to recall Wonderland more favorably she is actually remembered from her previous visit.
us Wonderland as a perturbing place where the inhabitants exist for little apparent reason other than to be peculiar and obnoxious. Do they reproduce? Most species seem to have only one member, as if nature quit while she was ahead. The ringleader is the Mad Hatter, played by Johnny Depp Whoever he plays he is that character through and through.
This is a Wonderland that holds perils for Alice, played by Wasikowska with beauty and pluck. The Red Queen wishes her ill, and the White Queen (Anne Hathaway) wishes her well, perhaps because both are formed according to the rules of Wonderland queens. To be sure, the insecure White Queen doesn't exhaust herself in making Alice welcome. The Queens, the Mad Hatter, Alice, the Knave of Hearts (Crispin Glover) and presumably Tweedledee and Tweedledum are versions of humans; the others are animated, voiced with great zest by such as Stephen Fry (Cheshire), Alan Rickman (Absolem the Caterpillar), Michael Sheen (White Rabbit), Christopher Lee (Jabberwocky), Timothy Spall (Bayard) and Barbara Windsor (Dormouse).
The film is enchanting in its mordant way until, unfortunately, it arrives at its third act. Here I must apologize to faithful readers for repeating myself. Time after time I complain when a film develops an intriguing story and then dissolves it in routine and boring action. We've seen every conceivable battle sequence, every duel, all carnage, countless showdowns and all-too-long fights to the finish.
Why does "Alice in Wonderland" have to end with an action sequence? Characters not rich enough? Story run out? Little minds, jazzed by sugar from the candy counter, might get too worked up without it? Or is it that executives, not trusting their artists and timid in the face of real stories, demand an action climax as insurance? Insurance of what? That the story will have a beginning and a middle but nothing so tedious as an ending?