Alice in Wonderland Blu-ray
Tim Burton tries to create another masterpiece of imagination and film magic in a sequel to the classic fairy tale Alice in Wonderland starring Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter and Mia Wasikowska as Alice.
Film making 18/25
Video 25/25
Audio 25/25
Bonus Features 18/25
Total 86/100
Tim Burton brings his old friend Johnny Depp and a few new ones together in his next installment of classic Tim Burton fantasy with Alice in Wonderland. Taking its cue from the classic tale of the little girl who fell down a rabbit hole and found a wonderful new world Tim Burton creates a sequel to the time tested traditional tale.
Alice has this recurring dream of a world were a cat can disappear, a huge monster attacks her and a red queen needs to be put in her place but in real life she needs her own place in society. Alice is a nineteen year old upper class girl from a good family who is on the verge of what everyone else expects, her marriage.
At her engagement party she shows her retaliatory nature by not wearing garters or a corset and her mother is furious when Alice runs from the nerd who proposes to her. Seeing a rabbit in a waistcoat Alice takes chase and begins the second miraculous adventure of her life.
During her return to Underland many inhabitants think she is the real Alice of legend but Alice cannot believe she is the one who is foretold and has visited before. Alice finds out that the Red Queen now rules Underland and the White Queen is banished to her castle until someone defeats the Jabberwocky.
Eventually we are revisited with the classic inhabitants of Underland and the world of the Lewis Carroll classic but the story by Linda Woolverton is just missing something. Linda Woolverton is no stranger to classic Disney fare as her tale of Beauty and the Beast was a much better written story and co-writer of The Lion King is also some of her credits.
Alice in Wonderland is a great tale of Alice now 13 years after her first visit returning to set things straight by defeating the Red Queen and killing the Jabberwocky using the Vorpal Sword. Alice also encounters the familiar Cheshire Cat, Absalom the caterpillar, the Mad Hatter, the Dormouse and all the other classic characters.
The problem here is the story just misses that all around emotional tug and clear running tale to keep the audience glued to their seat. Instead we are glued to our seat by the audio and most notably the video which is utterly fantastic in high definition.
Alice in Wonderland would be only be a good film and worth a look if it were not for the outstanding video and almost perfect audio that creates a classic must have Blu-ray release. The story is pretty good but does not clearly flow at times from one scene to the next but just watching the CGI blended movie is worthwhile.
Alice in Wonderland in Blu-ray is a fantastic video production with most of the film being CGI animation with an occasional actor thrown into the scenes. Watching the bonus features and how they filmed the movie is a definite must and is probably how films are going to be made in the future more and more.
Actors do their thing sometimes in partial or all green masking fabric creating green screens for animation to bring the wonder of CGI to both the scenery and background as well as parts of the characters themselves. Much of the first part of the movie above the Underworld in normal Victorian England is just regular high definition video and acting but it still looks fantastic with vivid color and sharp video.
Even the costumes look fantastic, they really did an excellent job of recreating the world of Underland as well as the regular world of Alice's youth. The video is without grain with clear crisp color and great looking throughout the film with no problems evident at all.
Audio is also great from the DTS-HD Master Surround Sound audio track with clear crisp voice and good low frequency effect. Surround sound is fantastic with very pronounced use of side or rear speakers and low frequency effects or bass is great and well balanced.
The audio is very well done and this is one film you need to have for both surround sound and if you want to test components of a home theatre system. Both audio and video are so well done this is another movie along with Avatar to show off your home theatre or Blu-ray system or to make sure everything is working as it should be.
Bonus features of the Blu-ray edition are fantastic and well worth the extra cost of the Blu-ray version along with the high definition video and excellent audio. The Blu-ray version contains the Blu-ray copy with its bonus features, the standard definition digital copy and a standard DVD version.
You get about a half hour feature about the characters of Alice from the stars of Mia Wasikowska and Johnny Depp to others like Anne Hathaway and Michael Sheen. This feature is just as good as the Making of feature called Making Wonderland that runs for about 20 minutes.
The Making Wonderland could have been longer as there certainly was more involved with filming and production but it does give you a good idea of what is going on behind the scenes. Alice in Wonderland is a great film and besides the story being a little disjointed it is from the eclectic mind of Tim Burton and is obviously his kind of movie.
There is a kind of feeling that the story is just missing the mark with everything else that works so well you kind of forgive the lack of a flow to the storyline. Alice in Wonderland is a fantastic must have feature for a home theatre collection and well worth the purchase in high definition.