Alice au pays des merveilles

I have seen the film it was shown over the easter weekend here and it's great i have seen many of the different versions when I was a child but this one is great the puppets and special effects in just two hours they managed to get two books in and it wasn't that much different to the version made in the 1970's except that one was musical,but it's just the same except for the new bits added on to the story.

Being a big fan of the books and the author's work, I have seen most of the film adaptations made of the Alice books (and yes, there were two), and this is one of the better adaptations, and certainly a wonderful film.

Filled with famous faces and some wonderful sets, it may not be 100% like the book, but I won't have a word against this film anyway. The writers make the same mistake of mixing the two books together (understandable), and throw in a few new morals and themes (stage fright, mostly), but it's still great. Folks like Gene Wilder, Pete Postlethwaite, Christopher Lloyd, Robbie Coltrane, Whoopi Goldberg, Ben Kingsley, Martin Short and others make their own contribution to this magical TV production.

The whole thing was an honest live action work that made a decent effort to correct what Disney messed up. Now, be fair, the animation was wonderful (very), but a terrible adaptation. So applaud yourselves, Halmi & Halmi (and everyone else, esp. Richard Hartley for music). You did a great job. And readers pick up a copy of the DVD, it's a great movie.

I love the two Alice books and quite often I find myself looking through the pages, reading some of my favorite parts.

I think for a TV_version, this film works quite well, it is a treat to watch all those celebrities becoming some of the most famous characters in literature. Strangely though, my favorite sequence is the one with Peter Ustinov and Pete Postlethwaite as the Walrus and the Carpenter, probably the only scene in the movie that does not contain CGI.

So, why only six stars? As in most versions, the makers of the movie have mixed all kinds of elements from "Alice in Wonderland" with "Through the looking glass" (Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum, The Walrus and the Carpenter, The White Knight). It may work, if you really look at the books just as a collection of episodes, but whenever this is done, the makers miss the point of the books. Alice in "Through the looking glass" is quite different from Alice in "Alice in wonderland" and also, there is a completely different composition to the latter book which is explained in the preface and which finds no acknowledgment whatsoever here. I think the makers of this movie again don't understand the books at all and though I enjoy watching these scenes independently from each other, the whole leaves me unsatisfied.

I have gotten used to mixing the Alice stories, Walt Disney has done the same thing and others as well. But what bothers me most about this film it that it turns the whole thing into a story of initiation. Come on.... Alice does not dare to perform a song in front of her parent's guest but after walking through Wonderland she finally does? This is just plain wrong and completely in contrast to the meaning of the books. Why would you want do make sense out of nonsense? The books are meant to portray Victorian stereotypes, make fun of language etc, but not to enrich a child to become more independent and self-assured. Moreover, it does not make sense at all, why Alice should finally be able to sing in front of the others.

All in all, this movie has fine performances and puppets and decent (considering the time it was made and it being made for TV) CGI, is nice to look at but in the end only mediocre TV-entertainment.

I am not entirely sure whether this version is the best version of the book, as I grew up on the Disney film. The book is a real delight, it is admittedly oddball, but it is charming and visionary with memorable colourful characters. That is the same for Through the Looking Glass, I do prefer Alice in Wonderland as a book, but Through the Looking Glass does have a nice narrative and the characters still have their appeal.

Back on target, this TV version is not bad at all. Actually it is decent. The length is rather excessive though making some scenes drag on a bit, and as sweet as it was the subplot about Alice being asked to sing at a party I had mixed feelings about. While it meant that Alice goes on a sort of journey in the film character-wise, it felt somewhat unnecessary. Plus in terms of performances, while I enjoyed the acting on the whole, Whoopi Goldberg as the Cheshire Cat disappointed me. She has the grin and her costume was wonderful, but she should have had more screen time.

However, there is lots to enjoy here. For a TV movie, the visuals are pretty amazing. The sets are really colourful, the landscapes are vivid, the special effects are fairly impressive and the costumes are visionary. And I found the music surprisingly memorable, quite sweet really. I know people have complained of the screenplay being poor, personally I didn't find that. I enjoyed spotting the quotes lifted from the books and the actors seemed to having fun with it. Some of the added lines didn't quite work as well, but they were entertaining. Likewise with the merging of the two books, I for one didn't find that a problem. The director also does a good job making Wonderland as magical, as odd and as dreamlike as it should be, and some scenes were very well directed, especially the Mock Turtle sequence, the Caccus race, the Hatter's tea party, the Walrus and the Carpenter and of course the courtroom scene.

The acting is also very enjoyable. Like Goldberg, Christopher Lloyd as the White Knight could've done with more screen time, but he does a very good job with what he has. Ben Kingsley is entertaining as Major Caterpillar, even if he did have some of the film's weakest dialogue, he delivers very well. Shiela Hancock, while she has been better, was fun as the Cook, a lot of shouting but hey she was fun. Tina Majorino I had no problem with as Alice, I sometimes find Alice in film adaptations bland but Majorino isn't bland, she is appealing and likable. Peter Ustinov is a perfect Walrus, likewise with Pete Postlethwaite as the Carpenter. Gene Wilder does fine also as the melancholy mock turtle, he started off a tad uncomfortable, no wonder with his costume as they are horrible to wear, but once he gets into the role he starts enjoying himself more. My favourite performances though were Miranda Richardson as a suitably shrill Queen of Hearts, Simon Russell Beale in a amusing turn as the King of Hearts and Martin Short as the somewhat eccentric Mad Hatter. Jason Flemying was also a riot as the Knave of Hearts as were Robbie Coltrane and George Wendt as Tweedledee and Tweedledum.

Overall, flawed but perfectly decent made for TV adaptation. 7/10 Bethany Cox

Lewis Carroll is a difficult author to adapt satisfactorily to the screen. Worse yet, most versions try to add some sort of lesson to the story that was never there to begin with. This, too uses a version that simply doesn't work. Alice does not want to have to sing "Cheery Ripe" so the whole film becomes about the importance of performing for an audience. That fails to really hold the film together. Despite this, this is probably the best-looking version of the two books yet. It does neither what the Children's Theatre Company did in 1982, and try to exactly mimic Tenniel's illustrations, nor that of the Harry Harris production, in which the actors had to be recognizable so they wore simple costumes with pig ears or rabbit ears, etc. Here there is a mix of puppetry and mere suggestion. Many of the minor anthropomorphics simply bear resemblance to whatever animal they were supposed to be, such as there was the use (again) of an all-star cast. It frequently makes fun of the fact that many of the cast do not speak in an English accent, though the American actor playing Alice does. The film, however, has beautiful cinematography and visionary effects. The early sequence in the library seems like the Halmis are trying to out-Gulliver their adaptation of Book III of Gulliver's Travels. The extreme visuals begin with the giant metronome at the beginning and carry all sorts of wonderful metaphor. Odd jump cuts and strange reflections don't look like goofs, but contribute to weirdness. A storm like _The Neverending Story_'s Nothing forces her to move on in her dream world to escape. The sped-up photography for the White Rabbit seems a nod to _El Gatto con Botas_, and of course, it's tied together like MGM's version of _The Wizard of Oz_. Like all films of these books, it has good elements and poorly handled elements, and certainly there is no definitive version, but this is one of the more interesting ones.