Absolute Wonderment

Fall through the rabbit hole and into Wonderland as the most anticipated movie of the year opens in cinemas in glorious 3D. Take it away, Mr. Burton.

When I first laid eyes on Johnny Depp's tangerine mane exploding from underneath a green and red top-hat, I think I died a little inside. His yellow irises proceeded to kill what remained of my sanity, and when he parted his lips to reveal a blackened gap between his two front teeth, the last shred of reason flew away.
It was at that second I decided that my entire life would culminate in the two-hour preview of Alice in Wonderland, and no moment in my life would ever top it. I would get bragging rights of incredible proportions for at least four days before the movie shows in cinemas. I would be bewildered, bewitched and bedazzled by Burton.
I was right.
And as I too, fell into the rabbit hole and joined in the Mad Tea Party, I wish I never had to leave this terrifyingly beautiful world of wonders.
The movie begins with a little girl named Alice Kingsley, who tells her father that she has dreams of white rabbits in waistcoats and strange creatures, of Red Queens and White. She had vivid nightmares in which the world is both bizarre and beautiful.
Fast forward 13 years and Alice (played by newcomer Mia Wasikowska) is all grown up, ready to be married off to a man she does not love. But instead of saying 'yes' or 'no' to the proposal, she follows a white rabbit dressed in a waist coat - and lo! Behold! She falls into a rabbit hole, to which her adventure begins in small, tiny as well as very big ways.
The story of Alice is one familiar to us primarily in the form of Disney's 1951 classic animation, which is based upon the 1865 book 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' by Lewis Carroll. The sequel to this book, written in 1872, was 'Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There'.
Characters from both books appear in this adaptation, but Tim Burton's movie is hardly a continuation of the books or the Disney cartoon: Burton's imagination showed him the way to bring these two books together to result in a tale of fantastical adventure.
Taking great liberties with the original story, the movie urges you to delve blindly and delightedly into the world he has created for you - aided and abetted by the cast of actors of course.
It is this cast of actors who will receive most praise here: In every way, each and every character is perfect for the actor behind it. From Johnny Depp as the totally bonkers Mad Hatter to Helena Bonham Carter as the homicidal and petulant Red Queen, the cast performed admirably even though they worked on green screens almost 90 per cent of the time.
And where do I even begin to describe how utterly magical it is, watching this world come alive in three-dimension? The lush jungles, the barren lands, the bloody rivers of heads cut off by the queen - these glorious moments in the movie left me with my mouth agape.
But here is where I state a small complaint: As far as plots go, it felt like scriptwriters threw their hands in the air and declared: 'The story is nutters but let's dazzle them anyway!'
See, the movie left me feeling that it was made to either delight or devastate those already intimate with Alice's story. It felt like both a faithful tribute and an irreverent mash-up of the books. It makes all the sense and none at all. It was madness and sanity rolled into one. Apart from where the script churns out a good chuckle, it felt just a wee bit flat.
But as it stands, it would not matter.
In the end, this movie is one with such breathtaking aplomb, it will probably blow your eyeballs out and you'd still be weeping in gratitude, because the last thing you see would be the unprecedentedly beautiful imagery of a world magical, magnificent and most of all, mad.