I think the movie Hook is great. I know that’s not a popular opinion, as Spielberg’s Robin Williams-starring “Peter Pan Grows Up” story was a failure, both commercially and critically. It was the Speed Racer of its time, a gossip-plagued box office bomb that attempted to return to a well-loved world but in a very different form. (As it happens, I’m crazy about the Wachowskis’ Speed Racer, too.) My love of Hook is twofold: one, I always like to know what could’ve have happened next--which is why I always read those Pride and Prejudice follow-ups, despite what should be better judgment by now--and two, the movie reminds us of a very important truth: it is all too easy to let the magic disappear from our lives. It reminds us (well, okay, me) that “growing up” can, much too often, lead to growing tedious; that we all need a little of the Pan’s irreverent spirit and have-at-you attitude in this mundane world; that we should never forget how much fun it can be to just have fun without regard for appearance or consequence. Pixie dust can make you fly if you believe it can.

Hook made me want to believe it can.

Nevertheless, when it was announced that Tim Burton was attempting to Hook¬-ize another classic British tale and Disney cartoon, I won’t deny that I was more than a little fearful. Burton’s previous kids’ movie remake, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, didn’t exactly inspire me with confidence (hated it!), and it was hard to imagine what Burton could do with the original movie’s “It was all a dream, Dinah!” ending. Perennial Burton co-conspirators, Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham-Carter, would be along for the ride, of course, but still, I was concerned. I, too, can believe six impossible things before breakfast (one of which is often that I’m awake in time for breakfast), but I was struggling with the notion of King of Looming Darkness Burton as heir to Lewis Carroll’s whimsical, opium-fuelled brilliance.

I needn’t have worried. Alice (Grows Up and Goes Back to Being) in Wonderland is tremendous. It really, really is. Now, settle down, children, and I shall tell you a story.

Shadow-eyed Alice (Mia Wasikowska) has been having recurring bad dreams all her life. Dreams of falling down holes and chasing rabbits and wicked queens. As a child -- possibly a Child of the Corn, from the looks of her -- her cool father (Marton Csokas, Celeborn from The Lord of the Rings!) comforted her; now nineteen, Alice has only an unimaginative mother for consolation.

Victorian-era Alice establishes herself almost immediately as a freethinker, no doubt a suffragette, with her scandalous disregard for corsets and petticoats and betrothals to lords. The lord in question, Hamish (Tim Pigott-Smith, and never was a man named so aptly), is a flame-headed nincompoop who gives redheads a bad name (as one myself, I find him offensive), and his disagreeable mother (Geraldine James) is a matricide-in-law waiting to happen. She walks with Alice in the garden, and if one didn’t know from all the posters, trailers and general pop culture saturation that Helena Bonham-Carter plays the Red Queen/Queen of Hearts in this movie, you might have thought that James would soon be ordering executions in full heart-covered regalia. (“You could always paint the roses red,” Alice suggests to this dragon lady, when she exclaims in horror that the gardeners have planted white roses in error. “What an odd thing to say,” Lady Ascot dismisses; and, really, Alice, what were you thinking? Who would dare to paint the vulgar paint the royal color red?)

It is while taking this stroll, and hearing about her ginger haired beau’s delicate constitution, that Alice first sees the rabbit. Then she sees it a few more times until, just as Lord Firecrotch proposes, she is overcome with the need to chase it. And chase it she does, falling down, down the rabbit hole and into a small, locked room.

Well, this is very familiar.

Of course, that’s not all that we recognize. We soon see not only the White Rabbit (still sporting his signature waistcoat—though he doesn’t seem to be especially behind schedule on anything this time around), but plenty of other old friends and acquaintances. The Dormouse (Barbara Windsor), shrill and skeptical; Tweedledum and Tweedledee (Matt Lucas), contrary-wise and wise-contrary; the hookah-smoking Blue Caterpillar (Alan Rickman), cryptic and circuitous; The Cheshire Cat (Stephen Fry), amorphous and really very amusing; he provided, for me, the only laugh-out-loud moment of the film. More on this later.

All these old friends now dwell under the despotic reign of the wicked Red Queen (Helena Bonham-Carter), whose jealousy of her beautiful sister the White Queen (Anne Hathaway) has sent her even further off the deep end than she was on the occasion of Alice’s last visit. (Seriously, movie, leave redheads alone!) When first we see the Red Queen, she has just had her tarts stolen, and despite all the nursery rhyme evidence against him, doesn’t even suspect the Knave of Hearts (Crispin Glover). Stayne—the Knave’s first name, one assumes—is the Queen’s creepy enforcer, sidekick, advisor and crush, a kind of Guy of Gisborne/Jafar/Anakin Skywalker hybrid who looks just like Stark from Farscape.

Back to Alice: the Cheshire Cat leads her to the still-in-progress Tea Party she visited all those years ago, and she sees again The March Hare (Paul Whitehouse), replete with an almost incomprehensible Scots accent; and oh, hello The Mad Hatter! Johnny Depp, sporting the orange frizz with which we’re surely all well acquainted by now, is completely charming as this sweet, simple yet complicated soul, and utterly commands the screen. He is also responsible for one of my favorite movie moments ever: Frisbee hat plane!

Back to the Red Queen: she’s still all “Off with their heads!” and playing croquet with hedgehogs; same ol’ same ol’ at ol’ Heart Castle. When Alice arrives, enlarged due to eating too much cake (is this some kind of Biggest Loser cross-promotion?), the Queen adopts her as her new favorite, “Um… from Umbridge.”

The stupid Dormouse soon reveals Alice’s identity, however (after Stayne, his advances rejected, denounces Um as a wanton), and the chase is on. Stayne knew Alice was back, and has been looking for her, but never made the connection. “Of course,” he says, d’ohing hard. “Why didn’t I see it?” Um. Yeah. Why didn’t you?

But exactly why has Alice been returned to Wonderland at this time (or Underland, as is apparently its name now), and why does the Red Queen want her stopped? Because the White Queen has, for some unfathomable reason, chosen Alice as her champion on the Frabjous Day in which the fate of the realm shall be decided. The Red Queen has chosen the Jabberwocky, which means Alice has to beat the fricken Jabberwocky in order to save this beloved fairy tale world for all her peculiar friends.

Jesus. I found it hard work even reading about that damn thing, and the poem’s only seven stanzas long.

Now, as this is a Tim Burton movie, there was every chance that this showdown would end very, very badly for our blond little dab of a thing, who even up to this point still isn’t quite sure that what’s happening is real. However, as this also a Disney film, there was… well, no chance of that at all. The day is saved, etc. etc. But despite the child-friendly ending, the direction is still very Tim Burtony, foreboding and gloomy, with an almost sepia-hue at times – seriously, what does the man have against sunlight? It’s an enchanting world he’s created here, but it’s also disturbingly surreal. So, we can check that box then. Tim Burton = eerie. It’s pretty basic math.

The performances are also Tim Burton-quality excellent, most unexpectedly from Hathaway, who gives her pure-as-the-driven White Queen a holier-than-thou air that completely changes one’s perspective on the character, and from newcomer Wasikowska, who carries the film with a kind of wan-faced sullen wistfulness that is utterly compelling to behold.

But it is the writing that lifts this Alice in Wonderland: The Return above reproach. Written in very much the Carroll style (“You were much more… muchier. You’ve lost your muchness.”), but also with a hint of wry self-awareness, Linda Woolverton’s script blends elements of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass (or, more likely, sticks to most of the blending already done in the 1951 Disney version), but also brings to it a very modern sense of knowing, winking irony . This movie is not laugh-out-loud funny (except for that bit with the Cat). It is subtle-funny, which a much harder trick to perform. It’s entertaining and amusing the whole way through, even when it’s being scary, and yet you’re not laughing at it. I’m not sure exactly how such a feat was accomplished, but I like it. (I feel much the same about Marshmallow Fluff.)

For all this movie is about Alice being in Wonderland, this movie is not really about Alice. It’s not even about Wonderland. It is so not for the very young, and not even really for the young at heart. It’s a movie with adult themes, like discovering your inner-strength and believing in the impossible and… well, there’s this whole fetishistic undertone to the Red Queen’s love of “large things” and Stayne’s hard-on for giantess Alice that is definitely an Adult Theme, in the MPAA-way. And speaking of this fetish, another theme of the movie is pandering to those in power: the moment when a court wench’s false Steve-Martin-in-Roxanne nose falls off is beyond awkward, and that one incident says more about the lengths to which people will go to be accepted and included than an entire season of The Swan ever did.

But, ultimately, this is a movie about female empowerment (again, unlike The Swan). Alice is an unconventional miss in a conventional time, defying expectation, flouting authority, the crusading anti-paradigm. “I make the path!” she exclaims, defiantly, when being told (again) what to do. She returns to the real world having grown up in what she’d thought a child’s dream, and she takes charge of her own destiny with a particularly inspiring display. Nice work, Alice! You go, young lady!

However, much as I loved it, I do have one quarrel with this movie: still no Lion and the Unicorn? Come on! Surely I’m not the only one who wants to see the outcome of that fight?

Surely?

Guys?

  -- Rachel Hyland