Tim Burton was born to bring Alice in Wonderland to the big screen. Ironically, his version of the Victorian text plays more like The Wizard of Oz than a Lewis Carroll adaptation. On the day of her engagement party, the 19-year-old Alice (a nicely understated Mia Wasikowska) is lead by a white-gloved rabbit to an alternate reality that looks strangely familiar--she's been dreaming about it since she was 6 years old.

Stranded in a hall of doors, she sips from a potion that makes her shrink and nibbles on a cake that makes her grow. Once she gets the balance right, she walks through the door that leads her to Tweedledum and Tweedledee (Matt Lucas), the Dormouse (Barbara Windsor), the Blue Caterpillar (Alan Rickman), and the Cheshire Cat (a delightful Stephen Fry), who inform her that only she can free them from the wrath of the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter channeling Bette Davis) by slaying the Jabberwocky.

To pull off the feat, she teams up with the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp in glam-rock garb), rebel bloodhound Bayard (Timothy Spall), and Red's sweet sister, the White Queen (Anne Hathaway in goth-rock makeup). While Red welcomes Alice with open arms, she plans an execution for the hat-maker when he displeases her ("Off with his head!"). Drawing from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, Burton creates a candy-colored action-adventure tale with a feminist twist. If it drags towards the end, his 3-D extravaganza still offers a trippy good time with a poignant aftertaste. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

So if you're looking for the fantastic updated version of this classic story, then buy Alice in Wonderland on DVD and Blu-ray above, and enjoy some great, cheap prices while you're at it.

Dreams and "what ifs" have no place in the life of hockey player Derek Thompson (Dwayne Johnson). As a major league player who's been moved down to the minor leagues following an injury, Derek thrives on negative attention, is ruthlessly pragmatic, and doesn't think twice about crushing the hopes and dreams of even his youngest fans. His poor attitude spills over into his personal life when he almost convinces his girlfriend's young daughter Tess (Destiny Whitlock) that the tooth fairy doesn't exist.

As if the potential end to his relationship with girlfriend Carly (Ashley Judd) wasn't bad enough, Derek's actions inexplicably result in a nighttime summons from the "Department of Dissemination of Disbelief." Transformed into a tutu-wearing fairy with wings and whisked away to a fairy world, Derek assumes that his fanciful journey--and his sentencing by the head fairy (Julie Andrews) to a two-week stint as a tooth fairy--is just a bad dream. When his pager starts buzzing and wings sprout from his back at inopportune times, he realizes that his sentence is for real, yet he continues to deny the possibility that dreams and imagination have value.

Derek's disbelief makes him an extremely inept fairy, but with the help of fellow fairy Tracy (Stephen Merchant) and some bonding time spent with Tess and her brother Randy (Chase Ellison), he begins to glimpse the importance of dreams and imagination and even manages to rediscover some of his own dreams in the process. Derek is definitely one crazy fairy, but Dwayne Johnson's skilled performance drives home the message that it's OK to dream, believe, and imagine. (Ages 7 and older) --Tami Horiuchi

Dave (Jason Lee) isn't exactly the typical father figure with an average family, but he cares deeply about his adoptive chipmunks Alvin (Justin Long), Theodore (Jesse McCartney), and Simon (Matthew Gray Gubler). While the performing life presents its own unique challenges, Dave always does his best to instill a sense of compassion and familial love into his young charges.

When Alvin begins to get a little too caught up in his own stardom, Dave reminds him to share the spotlight with his fellow chipmunks, but Alvin gets carried away and ends up inadvertently injuring Dave on location in Paris. Aunt Jackie (Kathryn Joosten) steps in to look after the Chipmunks, but when her wheelchair rolls down a flight of stairs, only her irresponsible grandson Toby (Zachary Levi) is left to watch over the boys.

An unemployed video gamer who lives with Jackie, Toby is completely unprepared for the responsibility of caring for the Chipmunks, but he agrees nonetheless. Starting school is not easy for the Chipmunks, and they are the target of bullying from their very first day. But Alvin eventually works his way in with the popular crowd, leaving Theodore and Simon to fend for themselves with little support from Toby.

The school principal (Wendie Malick) is one of the Chipmunks' biggest fans, and when the school's music department is about to be shut down due to lack of funds, she decides to enter them in a competition that will save the music program. Enter the Chipettes--female chipmunks Brittany (Christina Applegate), Eleanor (Amy Poehler), and Jeanette (Anna Faris), who are seeking their own chance for singing stardom--and the Chipmunks' dishonest ex-agent, Ian (David Cross), and the stage is set for some serious backstabbing competition.

Craziness reigns as the two groups wage a musical war against one another, but in the end it all comes down to a question of what's more important--stardom or friendship. As in the first Alvin and the Chipmunks movie, the music is strangely appealing despite being performed mostly in falsetto, the characters are cute, the action is comical, and the life lessons ring true. (Ages 6 and older with parental guidance due to some mild rude humor) --Tami Horiuchi

Based on a lesser-known book by children's author Roald Dahl (who wrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach), the movie is the work of Wes Anderson (writer-director of Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums), who expanded and elaborated on the original story; the combination is inspired. Anderson's sensibility--his fondness for meticulous compositions, coordinated colors, and narrative filigree--can sometimes seem finicky and stiff in live-action movies, but it's exquisitely suited to the painstaking art of stop-motion animation.

Every corner of the screen crackles with visual invention and whimsical humor. The top-notch vocal cast (which also features Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, Michael Gambon, Owen Wilson, and others) create vivid personalities that perfectly mesh with the movie's lush colors and luscious textures. The Fantastic Mr. Fox is an off-beat gem, a giddy mix of adult emotional issues, wild animal behavior, and childlike delight. --Bret Fetzer

After the visual bombast of many contemporary CG and motion-capture features, the drawn characters in The Princess and the Frog, the Walt Disney Studio's eagerly awaited return to traditional animation, feel doubly welcome. Directed by John Musker and Ron Clements (The Little Mermaid, Aladdin), The Princess and the Frog moves the classic fairy tale to a snazzy version of 1920s New Orleans.

Tiana (voice by Anika Noni Rose), the first African-American Disney heroine, is not a princess, but a young woman who hopes to fulfill her father's dream of opening a restaurant to serve food that will bring together people from all walks of life. Tiana may wish upon a star, but she believes that hard work is the way to fulfill your aspirations. Her dedication clashes with the cheerful idleness of the visiting prince Naveen (Bruno Campos).

A voodoo spell cast by Dr. Facilier (Keith David) in a showstopping number by composer Randy Newman initiates the events that will bring the mismatched hero and heroine together. However, the animation of three supporting characters--Louis (Michael-Leon Wooley), a jazz-playing alligator; Ray (Jim Cummings), a Cajun firefly; and 197-year-old voodoo priestess Mama Odie (Jenifer Lewis)--is so outstanding, it nearly steals the film. Alternately funny, touching, and dramatic, The Princess and the Frog is an all-too-rare example of a holiday entertainment a family can enjoy together, with the most and least sophisticated members appreciating different elements.

The film is also a welcome sign that the beleaguered Disney Feature Animation Studio has turned away from such disasters as Home on the Range, Chicken Little, and Meet the Robinsons and is once again moving in the right direction. --Charles Solomon

He finds a boat and sails to a distant land where fuzzy monsters are raising a rumpus in the forest. Since his wolf suit allows him to fit right in, he joins the fray, catching the eye of Carol (James Gandolfini, excellent), who notes, approvingly, "I like the way you destroy stuff. There's a spark to your work that can't be taught."

With that, they pronounce the diminutive creature king, hoping he can bring cohesion to their fractured family. After Max comes across Carol's scale-model town, he decides they should build a real one, but the project stalls as Alexander (Paul Dano) and Douglas (Chris Cooper) mope, Judith (Catherine O'Hara) browbeats Ira (Forest Whitaker), and Carol pines for K.W. (Lauren Ambrose), who prefers the company of owls Bob and Terry.

Max realizes he has to make a choice: stay with the wild things or return home, where he has to keep his aggressive impulses in check. For readers of Sendak's slim tome, his decision won't come as a surprise, but Jonze ends the story on a lovely grace note.

Until that time, the squabbling is a bit much--these monsters never stop talking--but Jonze, cowriter Dave Eggers, the Jim Henson Company, and singer/songwriter Karen O. have gone all-out to re-create the inner world of a child with as much empathy as was mustered for the inner adult world of Jonze's Being John Malkovich. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

Edward lives alone in a ruined Gothic castle that just happens to be perched above a pastel-colored suburb inhabited by breadwinning husbands and frustrated housewives straight out of the 1950s. One day, Peg (Dianne Wiest), the local Avon lady, comes calling. Finding Edward alone, she kindly invites him to come home with her, where she hopes to help him with his pasty complexion and those nasty nicks he's given himself with his razor-sharp fingers.

Soon Edward's skill with topiary sculpture and hair design make him popular in the neighborhood--but the mood turns just as swiftly against the outsider when he starts to feel his own desires, particularly for Peg's daughter Kim (Winona Ryder). Most of director Tim Burton's movies (such as Pee Wee's Big Adventure, Beetlejuice, Batman) are visual spectacles with elements of fantasy, but Edward Scissorhands is more tender and personal than the others.

Edward's wild black hair is much like Burton's, suggesting that the character represents the director's own feelings of estrangement and co-option. Johnny Depp, making his first successful leap from TV to film, captures Edward's childlike vulnerability even while his physical posture evokes horror icons like the vampire in Nosferatu and the sleepwalker in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Classic horror films, at their heart, feel a deep sympathy for the monsters they portray; simply and affectingly, Edward Scissorhands lays that heart bare. --Bret Fetzer

Depp's pale, androgynous Wonka led some to suspect a partial riff on that most controversial of eternal children, Michael Jackson, but Burton's film is too expansively magnificent to be so narrowly defined. While preserving Dahl's morality tale on the hazards of indulgent excess, Burton's riotous explosion of color provides a wondrous setting for the lessons learned by Charlie Bucket (played by Freddie Highmore, Depp's delightful costar in Finding Neverland), as he and other, less admirable children enjoy a once-in-a-lifetime tour of Wonka's confectionary wonderland.

Elaborate visual effects make this an eye-candy overdose (including digitally multiplied Oompa-Loompas, all played by diminutive actor Deep Roy), and the film's underlying weirdness is exaggerated by Depp's admirably risky but ultimately off-putting performance. Of course, none of this stops Burton's Charlie from being the must-own family DVD of 2005's holiday season, perhaps even for those who staunchly defend Gene Wilder's portrayal of Wonka from 34 years earlier. --Jeff Shannon

Who else but Tim Burton could make Corpse Bride, a necrophiliac's delight that's fun for the whole family? Returning to the richly imaginative realm of stop-motion animation (after previous successes with The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach), Burton, with codirector Mike Johnson, invites us to visit the dour, ashen, and drearily Victorian mansions of the living.

Here young Victor Van Dort (voiced by Johnny Depp) is bequeathed to wed the lovely Victoria (Emily Watson). But the wedding rehearsal goes sour and, in the kind of Goth-eerie forest that only exists in Burton-land, Victor suddenly finds himself accidentally married to the Corpse Bride (Helena Bonham Carter), a blue-tinted, half-skeletal beauty (how pleasantly full-bosomed she remains!) with a loquacious maggot installed behind one prone-to-popping eyeball.

This being a Burton creation, the underworld of the dead is a lively and colorful place indeed, and Danny Elfman's songs and score make it even livelier, presenting Victor with quite a dilemma: Should he return above-ground to Victoria, or remain devoted to his corpse bride? At a brisk 76 minutes, Burton's graveyard whimsy (loosely based on a 19th century Russian folktale) never wears out its welcome, and the voice casting (which includes Tracey Ullman and Albert Finney) is superbly matched the film's gloriously amusing character design, guaranteed to yield a wealth of gruesome toys and action figures for many Halloweens to come. --Jeff Shannon

Flint (Bill Hader), a clever young inventor with a reputation for creations gone awry, has recently completed a machine that he claims will turn water into food. Like his past failed inventions, Flint's new food-converting machine doesn't work as planned, and on its initial test run it ends up getting launched into the sky where clouds form and begin to rain cheeseburgers. The falling burgers destroy the Swallow Falls community's latest attempt to bolster its failing, sardine-dependent economy, but the Mayor's (Bruce Campbell) initial fury quickly turns to greedy anticipation as he begins to realize that food falling from the sky could serve as an innovative tourist draw.

As the entire town is caught up re-defining itself as "Chew and Swallow," only Flint's father (James Caan) remains skeptical of his son's invention. Greed leads to some very strange weather events like spaghetti twisters and extra-giant food which, while providing a huge career opportunity for brainy weather intern Sam Sparks (Anna Faris) who's masquerading as an air-headed television personality, also threaten to destroy the town and its inhabitants. In the end, only the collaborative efforts of Flint, his father, and Sam can save the town of Chew and Swallow from certain destruction by the out of control invention.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is a funny, imaginative film that's well-animated and immensely entertaining for kids and adults. Rated PG for brief mild language, but appropriate for most ages 5 and older. --Tami Horiuchi
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0"><tr><td><img src="http://dvdsonsale.net/images/B002WJI2QQ/51hsSaD%2BrXL._SL75_.jpg" /><td></tr><tr><td>Judi and Ron Barrett's Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is a much-loved, whimsical book about a tiny island where food falls from the sky like rain. The book serves as a jumping-off point for Sony's animated, digital 3-D Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs which is not so much a retelling of the book as an exploration of what makes food rain from the sky on a small island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Flint (Bill Hader), a clever young inventor with a reputation for creations gone awry, has recently completed a machine that he claims will turn water into food. Like his past failed inventions, Flint's new food-converting machine doesn't work as planned, and on its initial test run it ends up getting launched into the sky where clouds form and begin to rain cheeseburgers. The falling burgers destroy the Swallow Falls community's latest attempt to bolster its failing, sardine-dependent economy, but the Mayor's (Bruce Campbell) initial fury quickly turns to greedy anticipation as he begins to realize that food falling from the sky could serve as an innovative tourist draw. As the entire town is caught up re-defining itself as "Chew and Swallow," only Flint's father (James Caan) remains skeptical of his son's invention. Greed leads to some very strange weather events like spaghetti twisters and extra-giant food which, while providing a huge career opportunity for brainy weather intern Sam Sparks (Anna Faris) who's masquerading as an air-headed television personality, also threaten to destroy the town and its inhabitants. In the end, only the collaborative efforts of Flint, his father, and Sam can save the town of Chew and Swallow from certain destruction by the out of control invention. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is a funny, imaginative film that's well-animated and immensely entertaining for kids and adults. Rated PG for brief mild language, but appropriate for most ages 5 and older. --Tami Horiuchi Stills from Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (Click for larger image) <td></tr></table>