No spoilers that will ruin it if you haven’t seen it (unless you really don’t want to know what’s missing and who plays what)

The Cheshire Cat (Tim Burton/Disney Film Version)

The first bit was slow. It was fairly obvious that it was mostly scenery to wow the 3D viewers with (if you look carefully in the 2D you can see where the overlaps should be). But from the moment Stephen Fry wandered in as the Cheshire Cat (my favourite character from the book) and introduced Alice to Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter (my favourite character from the film), it picked up pace and became almost a different film.

‘Spot the celebrity’ was a fun pastime. The graphics and feel of the film was an interesting mix of Disney and Burton, which was intriguing to say the least, and it messed with the plot of the book in a new and interesting way that I actually enjoyed. It was also a strange mix of Wonderland and Looking Glass, with odd bits added in and even odder bits missed out (no mention of Dinah, the mock turtle, poor old bill, the missing gloves and fan, weeping a tidal wave or a trial).

It was a very peculiar mix, which put much more of the Hatter into the story, but then Johnny Depp pretty much carried the film for me. Anne Hathaway and Mia Wasikowska were OK, but I never liked either the White Queen of Alice herself very much. Helena BC was disappointingly banal as the Queen of Hearts with yet another twist on her wide-eyed-snipe-with-a-lisp character. I miss the days when all her characters were original and unique.

Overall, I enjoyed it though. I’m not a purist when it comes to squeezing a book and a bit into 108minutes, so the changes to the story were OK with me. I can see some being furious about it, especially how Alice is portrayed, but I liked this Alice much more than the insipid, whiny brat of the original book. They mashed up the original story a lot, but it works. Don’t go expecting a complete rehash of the novel and you’ll be fine.

One thing that bothered me is how ill Mia Wasikowska looked in the beginning. I thought at first that she looked emaciated and malnourished, however it occurred to me afterwards that it could be weird Burton-esque symbolism. When Alice is in the real world at the beginning everyone else looks normal and she looks like she’s at deaths’ door. (I was actually a little worried for the actress herself at one point). However, I noticed later that as she goes from being ‘Hardly Alice’ to ‘Almost Alice’ she becomes more normal looking whilst everyone else in Wonderland seems to take on a ‘bags under the eyes’ sort of look. I’m still not sure whether it’s a weird makeup/symbolism combo or whether maybe she actually was dog tired and in need of a good meal, and filmed the first bit of the film last. I’d be interested to know if anyone knows or has any thoughts on the subject.

Oh and for the record, I want to teach one or both of my cats to ‘evaporise’. Because it would just be such a neat trick. If they could also learn to talk and sound like Stephen Fry, that would be a bonus.