A mad cup of tea.

*cuts cup in half* Just a half cup for me.

I'm just going to say this to get it out now. I was dissapointed that burton didn't follow with the whole "change places" act. Albeit the scene was rather short in the movie, it was to me, one of the more iconic things about that scene in particular, and it wouldn't have been that hard to keep it in there.

Another item that bothered me which I haven't been able to figure out. Was the white mouse that was at the tea party in the movie when they arrived, the dormouse? because in the book, the dormouse was a rather large mouse, near the size of the hare and the hatter.

Okay those are my two main concerns about the movie. All in all, I preferred the book's version more. It was much more magical and random than the movie. Yes the movie's version was much shorter, and to me I felt it was rushed. "oh here's the tea party, stomp stomp stomp on the table, make Alice small and shove her in a tea pot; bad guys come, Cheshire Cat says hi and then says bye, tea sipping, then bad guys go bye, end scene." There was hardly any development for the characters in the movie compared to the book.

Yes, they are mad and that can quickly help with development, and yes, the mad hatter was in the rest of the movie after that, but the whole scene felt out of place and didn't have too much relevance to the rest of the movie because it was so short.

Now, the reason I liked the books version, it was so much more quirky and odd. Always changing places, tunes, attitudes and general feel. I for one found it really neat when they were discussing the topic of time, for me it made me think were they talking about father time as a actual being, or a theory? Or, as you stated in class, "to kill time." Could they have been talking the entire time based on that saying, "it kills time." instead of a actual theory or person? Who knows. I didn't quite understand the point for the part about the butter. But, then again, they're all mad.

So all in all, the book was better than the movie, because in my opinion, the movie trashed that entire scene. It has always been such an iconic scene from Alice in Wonderland, and it was a shame that it wasn't given its due credit. I did like how they made the Cheshire Cat however.

-David Yarbrough

P.S. Neat little info about the Cheshire Cat. I did a bit of research and one of its origins was a cheese mold, and the cat's head had a big smile on it. You would start from the tail, and go up to the head until it was gone. Thus, the disappearing Cheshire cat.