Alice is slightly bored with her pre-planned life in Victorian London… (South Africans with the desire to explore the world…) and while daydreaming in her own world, she sees a rabbit run past her, wearing a waistcoat and holding a pocket watch. Alice follows the rabbit, intrigued. (insert whatever aspect you are chasing or following in life… whether a job, a girl or a guy or just new a experience…)
So that sets the tone of how South Africans abroad compare to Alice’s desire for adventure, but what comes next is as unique to Alice’s experience as every moment of one’s adventures abroad are to the Saffa experiencing it!
Alice tumbles down a rabbit hole, which in 3D is quite frighteningly realistic and very much akin to a rollercoaster ride as you feel the need to put your arms out to prevent yourself colliding and scraping along the rough twisted sides of the tunnel…
She lands at the bottom of the tunnel in a heap. Alice is in the centre of a small room with many doors around her and a glass table in the centre. She pushes on each of the doors with increasing frustration and fear… until she removes a curtain to reveal a very teeny weeny extremely little sized door. She walks back to the table and spots a bottle which says ‘drink me’. Which she does…
…and thats when all the shrinking and stretching starts. Now I hope the rest of the story is starting to come back to you, because what happens next is for Alice to enter that very wee little door – to step into a whole other world…
Wonderland as Alice calls it, but officially name Underland in Tim Burton’s take on the Alice stories, is where the 3D effects blossom into fabulous grandeur as flowers talk and mushrooms grow, creatures fly at you and tea cups are hurled across the screen!
Tim Burton’s version is about the 20th remake of the classic Alice in Wonderland tales, as written in two books by British Lewis Carroll. There was Alice through the Looking Glass and Alice in Wonderland, of which this 3D version is a combination of both.
I shan’t tell you too much more – except to say that Johnny Depp plays a very kooky Mad Hatter character, Helen Bonham-Carter plays a devilishly delightful Red Queen and not to mention a charming Chesire Cat as voiced by Stephen Fry – and Matt Lucas from Little Britain as the voices of Tweedledum and Tweedledee as an almost male version of Vicky Pollard! Oh dear, Ive said too much already… and now I’m late, I’m late for a very important date!
Utterly delightflul and great escapism back to one’s childhood imagination of all adventures being possible and unfolding as you wish them too… and of course, that you are the hero of your own adventure!
