Alice in Wonderland

...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 ****

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.

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.

For a lot of people on this site, this is either one of thew best Disney movies or one of the worst. There is about 40 animated Disney movies and my personal favourite will always be the mad world of Wonderland. I don't actually know why but to me this is what i always thought about as a child, a mad world where simply nothing made sense. It goes like dynamite at only seventy two minutes and in that they have an array of entertaining characters and fourteen entertaining songs. To me it is the genius of Disney creating an entertaining look at a child's world. I think it is because of the Jungle Book that this is not as popular as some of the Disney Classics but you can't help but smile when you watch the Queen of hearts and the Mad Hatter being their own creative self's in the wonder of this amazingly clever gem

Let's face it, there are moments in ALICE IN WONDERLAND that are absolutely dazzling, imaginative and as artistic as anything the Disney artists were capable of doing. And yet, for all its achievement in the art of animation, this Disney film has always drawn mixed notices. Perhaps part of the problem is there is seldom a letup in the zany goings-on--seldom a chance to draw a breath and rest between each overly imaginative episode. Then too, it's the episodic quality of the whole story structure that upsets some as well as the frantic cartoon movements of its weird characters.

Faults and all, it's still a colorful event--probably one of the richest uses of color Disney ever attempted and with some wonderful styling in its background art. For me, a highlight of the film is the singing/talking flower sequence ("Golden Afternoon") with its haughty flowers discussing Alice as if she was some kind of other worldly creature with funny looking stems. (It reminded me of the snooty elephants laughing and speaking with contempt of the new baby elephant in Dumbo).

Other bits are equally brilliant--the shuffling army of cards in the Queen of Hearts episode; the baby oysters clothed in blue bonnets and pink dresses for the Walrus and the Carpenter; the droll humor in the Tweedledum/Tweedledee sequence; the smoking Caterpillar becoming irate when his three inches of height becomes the subject of conversation; and of course, the Mad Tea Party, full of hilarious slapstick and immensely aided by the voice talents of Bill Thompson (White Rabbit), Jerry Colonna (March Hare) and Ed Wynn (Mad Hatter). No less impressive is Verna Felton as the raucous voice of the Queen of Hearts in some of the film's funniest moments. With her army of cards, she plays a wicked game of croquet with flamingoes as mallets, hedgehog as a ball and cards as hoops, all the while displaying a lethal temper.

Despite some brilliant animation, pleasant songs and gorgeous art work, it's just another example of how difficult it is ("impassable" to quote Carroll) to translate this particular tale to the screen and still remain faithful to the original. Others (many other versions, in fact) have failed--but Disney at least provides a sprightly, if frantic, version that has appeal for adults and children.

Perhaps because its surrealism matched the hippy culture of psychedelia, ALICE enjoyed a welcome theatrical return engagement in the '60s and has become more respected in recent years (an American-made British fantasy popular even in the U.K.) as one of the studio's finest efforts.

Ironically, one of its most delightful characters--the doorknob--never appeared in the book but was applauded everywhere as an inspired bit of business.