It's been said that Lewis Carroll's novel is unfilmable, yet many valiant attempts have been made. Exhibit A: the Tim Burton-directed film Alice in Wonderland, which isn't an adaptation of the book, but a sequel that places Alice in a quest fantasy like The Chronicles of Narnia. The problem with the movie (and I never thought I would say this about a version of Alice directed by Tim Burton) is that it's not weird enough.

The film, available on DVD (with just three five-minute behind-the-scenes featurettes), is set some thirteen years after Alice first travels down the rabbit hole. Now nineteen, Alice (Mia Wasikowska) is invited to a party and is stunned to find that it is her own engagement party. Her intended groom is a dolt she barely knows, but while considering this marriage, she spies a white rabbit running past her. Alice falls down the rabbit hole again, where she reunites with the White Rabbit (voiced by Michael Sheen), Tweedledum and Tweedledee (Matt Lucas), the Caterpillar (Alan Rickman's voice), the Cheshire Cat (voiced by Stephen Fry), the March Hare, the Dormouse and the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp). But this time, things are different.

Wonderland has been conquered by the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter), who has an enlarged head, a towering henchman (Crispin Glover) and a fondness for beheadings. The Red Queen's sister, the White Queen (Anne Hathaway), is the rightful ruler of Wonderland, and an ancient scroll proclaims that Alice is the Chosen One who must slay the fearsome Jabberwocky (Christopher Lee's voice), so the White Queen can regain her power. Events climax in a battle of the computer-generated armies, a familiar sight to anyone who's seen The Golden Compass or Prince Caspian.

Burton's Alice plays more like a combination of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and The Wizard of Oz than Carroll's tale of madness underground. But, in Burton's opinion (noted in interviews for the film), other Alice movies followed the book, which meant no likable characters, no plot, and no reason for audiences to care. This worked on the page, but on the screen, it left many thinking "what was all that about?"

Burton's take on Carroll's characters is still rather dark. A monster gets its eye plucked out, another is beheaded (and its blood drank), and Alice swims through a moat full of severed heads. These sequences tend to push the film's "PG" rating to its limit. Still, for those around nine and up, there is much to enjoy here, at least on the level of eye candy. Virtually everything in Wonderland is computer-generated, including several of the characters, and it's an unsettling combination of live-action and digital animation. Wasikowska is interestingly sober, Bonham Carter is amusing, and Hathaway floats like a Disney princess. However, Depp (who doesn't appear until 30 minutes in) is basically imitating himself: he's a little silly, a little goofy, and not as much fun as Jack Sparrow. But if you always hated "Alice" because it has no plot, this may be the version for you.

Burton's film is a Disney makes an interesting contrast to the 1951 Disney animated version, a flop in its time. The '51 film is a semi-faithful adaptation of the book, with a then-famous voice cast, and it's probably the most frenetic animated feature produced by Walt Disney himself. The animation is brilliant, but the storytelling incredibly uneven, with the Mad Tea Party being the highlight. The DVD features many extras.

Disney's Alice films are certainly the best known, but there are others. The 1933 rendering is a fascinating mess, with a huge cast (Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, W.C. Fields, etc.) wearing grotesque masks instead of makeup. The effect is rather creepy, and the primitive special effects only add to the unnerving tone.

    The intriguing 1966 BBC production, directed by Jonathan Miller, is the most adult, with no animal costumes, no special effects, a sitar-heavy score written by Ravi Shankar and most of the dialogue taken straight from the book. The all-star cast, including Peter Sellers, John Gielgud and Malcolm Muggeridge, plays the material very dry; the effect is more of an attack on Victorian England than a kid's movie, and children should probably avoid it. (The DVD features a docudrama about how Carroll wrote the book; this featurette, at 70 minutes, is almost as long as Miller's entire film.)

In 1999, the novel was again adapted for television, with another stellar cast (Miranda Richardson, Ben Kingsley, Gene Wilder, etc.) floundering amidst another lavish production, and a way-too-long running time of 134 minutes. The high point of the movie is again the tea party, with Martin Short as the greatest Mad Hatter ever committed to live-action film.

These productions are all intriguing but unsatisfying attempts to wrestle with Carroll's truly great book. The films are visually compelling, if nothing else, and, for some, that may be enough. True Alice fans might find the animated version to still be the best one, but if you've never read the novel, Tim Burton's plot-driven adaptation may be the most satisfying. Perhaps that accounts for its (as of 2010) jaw-dropping one billion dollars in worldwide box office.

Scott Sentinella has been published in Cashiers du Cinemart, Animato!, Videomania, The Gardena Valley News, and the Carson (CA) News. He has devoted more of his time to books and pop culture than he would care to admit.