Dear Tim Burton,

I went to see your new film at the weekend. Alice in Wonderland. In 3D. With a Disney stamp on it and that lady who worked on Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King behind the writing desk.

Now, I’m not a 3D-sceptic Tim, let’s get that straightened out. I like the depth it gives to the images, and I like the clarity of picture you get with the digital projection it uses. But I don’t like the price hike and I don’t like having to wear the glasses over the top of my existing ones. Prescription 3D looks like it could be some way off. So I liked the use of 3D in your film, and you didn’t use it as a gimmick like certain sequences of Disney’s recent reimagining of A Christmas Carol did.

The attention to detail in the design of Underland was also good, Tim. Everyone was going on about how James Cameron had made ‘a whole new world’ in Avatar, when all he’d really done was copy/paste five or six animals with a few extra limbs into a rainforest. But there is more than enough imaginative power in the pages of Lewis Carroll’s novels to provide inspiration for a fairly deep onscreen environment, and you and your team have done a pretty good job of reimagining it. I could see that the first Disney version helped a bit as well.

What else is good? Oh yes, using the Jabberwocky poem as a foundation for the plot. I bloody love that poem Tim, and I also gather that you got some of the designs for the beast from old illustrations, which is faithful of you. Not sure you needed to make the beast talk though.

Right, I’ve been quite nice so far Tim, and you’ve deserved every word of encouragement, believe me. But I do have a couple of bones to pick with you. First, why did you cast Barbara Windsor and Matt Lucas? Distracting for a British audience, don’t you think? And a tiny bit irritating, at least for me. Second – Anne Hathaway…she’s awful, isn’t she? And didn’t she have that boyfriend who went to jail for massive fraud and money laundering? She’s not the sharpest of knives. Or whatever that saying is. Thirdly, why was Helena Bonham Carter doing an impression of Queen Elizabeth from series 2 of Blackadder? Frown.

Johnny Depp deserves his own paragraph. I do love Mr Depp, and have always appreciated his quirky roles. But you might have given him a little less control over this one. I don’t know why the Hatter had to become such a central character, and I don’t know why he was so endeared to Alice. I suppose you had to cement the plot to a couple of characters, and Depp is a massive star. But it didn’t work for me. I know you don’t know me Tim, but I think it’s time to put Johnny down. And never let him dance again. You managed to make your movie feel like Shrek in the closing seconds.

Despite criticising your casting a bit, I thought that Alice (Mia Wasikowska) was excellent, and I enjoyed Alan Rickman and Stephen Fry, both of whom managed to perform in an understated manner that didn’t damage the film in the same way that some of the other Brits did.

My biggest problem was that the film was too coherent, if that makes sense. It adhered to the same kind of story arc as other fantastic kid’s films of the past, and in doing so lost a lot of the lunacy and escapism of the source material. Apparently you told some journalist that you couldn’t attach yourself emotionally to the disjointed series of events that make up Carroll’s novels. But you’ve gone too far in the opposite direction with this one.

So you’ve not done too badly with this one Tim. I don’t think I want to see it again anytime soon, and I was a little bored and annoyed at the clichés during the showing. But kids will probably love it. The little girl sitting next to me was on the edge of her booster seat for quite a while.