Kim Robinson - Alice in Wonderland

I have to admit that I wasn't thrilled about seeing this movie. After seeing the new Charlie and the Chocolate Factory directed by the same man, Tim Burton, and having Johnny Depp take on another whimsical (also really creepy) character, Alice in Wonderland wasn't on my list of movies to see. Prior to going my friend kept telling me about how he got a headache watching in it 3D and that someone couldn't pay him to see it again. Although, after seeing the movie, it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. Depp was crazy, but not totally creepy like in Charlie. Also, I liked how it wasn't a remake of the original movie but rather a sequal or progression in Alice's life. She's grown up in this and is facing the challenges of adult life, like getting married and becoming a respectable woman in those times. When she's taken down the rabbit hole again she realizes that she's still there for a purpose and has responsibilities but of a different sort. When she gets back to her normal life she decides not to go through with the marriage and instead helps her dead father's dream of his trade company expand. I guess if I had to find a common thread throughout this movie that gives it some moral advice, it'd be that as long as you take responisbilities for your own actions, you don't have to take the actions that others want, we get to choose our own life.
While I was watching it I didn't know if anyone else got this feeling, but the people in her normal life had parallel characters in her time down the rabbit hole. The Red Queen and Hamish's mother, Alice's sister and the White Queen, even the blue caterpillar and Hamish's father. I felt like the Red Queen and Mrs. Kinsleigh were trying to push Alice into a life she didn't want, Alice's sister and the White Queen just seemed like pure genuinely nice people, and Mr. Kinsleigh and the blue caterpilalr were trying to get her to move forward in her life, in whichever direction she wanted to take it... I just thought it was interesting similarities. (P.S. glad she didn't accept Hamish's proposal. He was weird.)