Alicia en el país de las maravillas

When I was six, I had my tonsils out. The anaesthetist used ether and I hallucinated. My mother had bought me two comic books. One was Krazy Kat and the other the Disney "Alice in Wonderland." If you wanted something to set you up for delirium try those on for size. When I finally saw the movie, I was reminded of those subconscious images. This is an excellent animated film. I love its hard edge and portrayal of Lewis Carol's characters. It also features some wonderful songs. The Queen of Hearts is maniacal and the Mad Hatter diabolical. All the images of random craziness are in here, brought to life with artistic skill, making them unforgettable images.

...and certainly "Pinocchio" had a more popular and memorable song score, but for my money I'd pick "Alice In Wonderland" as one of Walt Disney's top achievements in animation. From Lewis Carroll's story, and filled with knock-out colors (pinks and blues and reds on inky blacks), this episodic tale would not have worked so well if the direction hadn't been so graceful, setting a light, jovial mood, and the songs so tongue-trippingly clever. Alice herself (voiced by Kathryn Beaumont) is lovely and funny, the supporting characters appropriately manic, and the quiet moments gently even out the craziness (as with the Tulgey Wood/"Very Good Advice" sequence). Disney certainly runs hot ("Pinocchio", "Bambi") and cold ("The Sword and the Stone"), but this fantastic journey into nonsense, from a practically-unfilmable book, is endlessly interesting from a visual standpoint. ***1/2 from ****

For material that does not lend itself very easily to cinema, this is a pretty good adaptation of "Alice in Wonderland" with some enjoyable characters and sequences. It succeeds, at least in a basic way, in capturing part of the manic but imaginative nature of Lewis Carroll's story.

Much of the language, poetry, and ideas that make the original story so captivating cannot really be conveyed very easily in a movie, and so it would be nearly impossible for any cinema version of Alice to be completely satisfying to those who love the book. Instead, this version simply tries to make the characters come to life, and to use the animation to recreate the feel, if not the depth, of Alice's experience.

The animation drives most of the movie, and at times it is pretty imaginative. Some of the voices work very well, too, with the likes of Ed Wynn and Sterling Holloway fitting the animated characters quite well.

Carroll's stories are so enchanting and creative that it is no surprise that there have been so many efforts through the years to capture the magic of the Alice stories on film. None of the cinema versions has yet come close to matching the books, yet the material itself has made most of them worth watching. In this one, the overall production has a definite Disney style to it, which makes it different from the original, but as a movie it works pretty well.

Alice one day while bored by the riverbank sees a white rabbit wearing a waistcoat and carrying a pocket watch. Out of curiosity Alice follows the rabbit down a rabbit eventually winding up in Wonderland a place of utter ridiculousness inhabited by characters who are stupid, crazy, or both.

Released in 1951, Alice In Wonderland adapted from the books Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Caroll had been a long gestating project as far back to the day's of Disney's Laugh O Gram studios in the 20s where the works loosely inspired Disney's early Alice Comedies. Attempts had been made by Disney to adapt the story to feature length with a preliminary outlines produced prior to the release of Snow White that were ultimately scrapped due to mitigating circumstances. While adaptations of Alice in Wonderland have been made before and since the 1951 Disney film, few, if any, of them have been as well regarded with the Disney version being the most fully realized version of the literary nonsense of Lewis Caroll.

Much like the source material, the story in Alice in Wonderland is less a straightforward narrative and more an excuse to showcase surreal imagery counter balanced against the normality and grounding of Alice who serves as our straight man to nonsense and insanity of Wonderland and its crazed inhabitants. Kathryn Beaumont voices the titular Alice and serves as an effective audience proxy whose down to earth no-nonsense delivery and insatiable curiosity makes her both an effective story engine to move the journey along as well as give the audience a grounding agent to give meaning, purpose, and weight to the surreal encounters of her journey.

Artistically speaking this is Disney's animation at its most unrestrained. Much like Three Caballeros Alice in Wonderland never sits still always keeping itself moving forward to the next bizarre head scratching tangent animated with the intensity of a technicolor fever dream. Unlike Three Caballeros however, the movie wisely gives us a grounding element with Alice and gives breaks in between the more outlandish tangents so the movie never gets exhausting. The animation used to bring Wonderland to life is very striking as Wonderland itself is very dark with many scenes having pitch black or dark black drops that work in contrasting against the purposefully more colorful and energized inhabitants. Every character and encounter stands out be it the petty, jealous, bad tempered Red Queen, the giddy gleeful mania of Mad Hatter and March Hare, or the seeming omnipotent Chesire Cat who's as powerful as he is crazy. Every encounter Alice faces leaves an impression with even the smallest (quite literally in some cases) leaving an impact.

Alice in Wonderland is a classic example of Disney animation and nonsensical story telling perfectly combined into an unforgettable experience. While not Disney's first attempt at feature length narrative nonsense, it's without question the best example of it produced on this scale up to this point and makes welcome viewing for any animation enthusiast.

Disney has a knack for enlightening children to tales from centuries ago by animating them, adding some songs and making everything pretty and colourful, Alice In Wonderland is that and a whole lot more.

Learning about Literary Classics from Disney cartoons is the most convenient, entertaining and wildly amusing ways of seeing what an author had intended the viewer to create in their mind. But nowadays, thanks to television, children can hardly get past the first sentence of a book without wanting a Pikachu or some sort of explosion to take place.

That's where the magic of Disney films come in. The animators, imagineers, musicians and creators take massive pride in the making of their literary classics to Disney masterpieces and Alice In Wonderland is a prime example.

The story of young Alice toppling down a rabbit hole and meeting a bunch of locals in the magical world of Wonderland is created perfectly through this Disney adaptation. Taking aspects from both the original Alice and Through The Looking Glass, the exploits of Tweedledum and Dee to the Mad Hatter's Tea party blend seemlessly in this brilliant animational masterpiece.

The musical score, with each character owning their own theme music, and the various songs throughout are enjoyable and fantastic.

The characters themselves shine, making each and everyone of them memorable especially the talents of Ed Wynn as The Mad Hatter and the brilliant J. Pat O'Malley as the Tweedles and their story telling equivalents.

So, the ideal way to introduce children, or even Highschool Students having to do books from the 19th Century, is to find a Disney Classic such as Alice In Wonderland and marvel at the creative genius behind the team that made books exciting for the new generation.