Unlike her, I was no newbie to 3-D movies, and sitting in front of the enormous IMAX screen with those ridiculously oversized 3-D glasses, I forgot how dizzy I initially get when trying to allow my eyes to get used to the interactive movie.

Right from the start, I noticed the film appeared to be more interactive when compared to other recent 3-D movies like “Avatar.”

In Tim Burton’s version of “Alice in Wonderland,” you might be surprised to find that the fairytale is depicted largely as an action-adventure movie with colorful characters — some animated — who liven up the cloudy skied land known as Underland. Yes, they renamed Wonderland.

Australian actress Mia Wasikowska plays 19-year-old Alice living in the Victorian era where she is expected to conform and is troubled not only by the undesirable man to whom she is to be engaged, but recurring dreams of strange creatures from Underland.

It took a while for me to get used to Alice, since her features are different than the cartoon Alice’s angelic blonde hair and bright blue eyes, but her strength as a young actress allows you to quickly realize why she was chosen for this role.

Burton successfully combines sadness, fear and fantasy in his memorable characters throughout the movie’s plot.
As a woman coming of age, Alice follows Nivens McTwisp, the White Rabbit, and tumbles down a hole to the familiar dreamland she visited when she was a child. She immediately is enticed with the well-known “Eat Me” cake and “Drink Me” potion and begins her trek through the fantasy land as a young girl trying to figure out if she is the right or wrong Alice.

Only “the right Alice” can slay the Jabberwocky, a dragon-like creature that terrifies Underland. It becomes obvious what Alice will do before she leaves the make-believe land once the hookah-smoking, jazzy voiced Absolem, the Caterpillar (voiced by Alan Rickman), shows Alice a scroll that clearly depicts her as doing so.

Underland lives amid the crossfire of two sisters, Iracebeth, the Red Queen, (Helena Bonham Carter) and Mirana, the White Queen (Anne Hathaway).

You will laugh at Carter’s interpretation of the Red Queen, a character meant to combine both the original Queen of Hearts and the Red Queen.

Her white face and stern, puckered red heart-painted lips with her bobble-head type face complements her infamous line “Off with his head!” perfectly.

It also creates automatic conflict with the White Queen, her sister who never demands decapitation due to her vows to never hurt a living creature, and whose admirable beauty aids in Alice’s chase from the Red Queen.

Another key character most people will enjoy is Johnny Depp’s heartful adaptation of the Mad Hatter. He opens Alice’s mind and saves her life more than once as he realizes that her realistic dreamland is his real-life journey of a mad man.

Alice and the Hatter’s friendship shows that imagination is a good thing before the end of the film, and Burton’s imagery of life-sized mushrooms and talking animals easily was accepted by not only my younger sister, but my mom and me as well.

The movie is not a darker version of “Alice in Wonderland” like many critics have stated, but a movie of a young woman coming into her own through her child-like fantasies. Anyone looking for a great colorful and high-paced interpretation of Lewis Carroll’s classic “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” need look no further than here.