Through the looking glasses

Pot smoking caterpillars that sound like Alan Rickman and a large grinning purple cat who belongs on QI. Weird and wonderful. Ka and myself were at the flicks again today and once again donned our Blues Brothers style 3D glasses to see Tim Burton's 'Alice in Wonderland'.
I miss the old 3D glasses. You know? The simple card ones with the green and red lens for each eye (can't remember which was which). You'd think these new black ones would look a bit cooler but when you've got to wear glasses to see the screen in the first place, walking around with two pairs of glasses on simultaneously could never be seen as cool. I think I was halfway down the escalators on my way out before I twigged I still had my two pairs on.
Anyway, Burton has did it again, creating another visually fantastic fantasy, bursting with detail, vibrant colour, visual gags, fantastic characters and artistic flair complete with his usual dark edging and quirky frames. What the movie lacks in plot it more than makes up for in effects and visual brilliance making all the scenes that you know are coming more than great fun to watch. Mia Wasikowska was fairly good as Alice, playing the part a little older and wiser to the Alice we remember from Disney's old cartoon. Johnny Depp's Mad Hatter is brilliant with Depp once more going haywire with glee, really getting his teeth into the part. Not to mention his tongue as he hits out with around four or five different accents throughout the movie. Bonham Carter, as the Queen of Hearts, is equally as good alongside the many computer animated and readjusted characters. Crispin Glover, for instance, (whom we all remember as George McFly in Back to the Future) is stretched by some kind of computer wizardry whilst Bonham Carter's head is enlarged to three times the size for some insanely brilliant Burtonesque reason. Michael Gough and Christopher Lee's voices also cropped up?! KA and myself played a vague 'whose voice was that?' game afterwards which she probably won by recognising Timothy Spall as the voice of the hound. If only Steve Whitmire had done the frogs... then again, maybe we should just be thankful it wasn't Paul (£90 a ticket?!!) McCartney.
The movie drags a little in some places and the plot is pretty simple, presumably for the kiddies sake, though I'm not sure how closely matched it is to the original book so that could perhaps be Carroll's fault. In all, the movie was great fun, especially in 3D but like 'Avatar', which we seen a few weeks ago, I suspect it won't hold the same 'fantastics' for me on DVD in the living room. That is, of course, unless I suddenly appropriate a giant screen TV from somewhere in the near future. Apparently 3D is the future at the movies and according to some also the future of home entertainment... Total Wipeout in 3D... wow, that wall of boxing gloves would look a hell of a lot scarier!?