While not as atrocious as Video Brinquedo's adaptation, which had no redeeming qualities whatsoever, this is still one of the weaker adaptations of Lewis Carroll's timeless story.
The most interesting thing about it, and the best thing, is the use of audio archive footage for the voice work. While the voice actors, which include Dinah Shore as Alice and Arthur Q. Bryan as White Rabbit deserved better, Bryan actually doesn't have a lot to do, the voices themselves are actually good and the audio is pretty well incorporated. The truncated Old Father William song is also pretty good, and Shore sings it beautifully, and it is closer than the Video Brinquedo adaptation (which was virtually uncrecognisable apart from the characters) to the story of the book, at least more of the characters were present, events were recognisable and at least one can tell what's going on.
Unfortunately, there is not much else to recommend here. The worst asset is the animation, which manages to be even worse than the horrendous animation of the Video Brinquedo adaptation, significant enough to bring things down several more notches. Because it was such a visual eyesore it was a real struggle to get to the end, and I never judge something without seeing the whole thing. Colours are flat and garish, backgrounds are sparse in detail, blocky and have no finesse but faring worst is the quite hideous character designs, with characters looking creepily weird (Caterpillar), grotesque (Mock Turtle and the racial stereotype of the Duchess) and stiff in movement and out of proportion (the Mouse). Some, especially the Mock Turtle and Gryphon (Bill the lizard too), suffered from a case of if their names hadn't been mentioned or if one wasn't familiar with the story it would have been impossible to tell what they were meant to be, Alice looks dead in the eyes the entire time and others like March Hare look really odd.
Other than the Old Father William number the rest of the music isn't as memorable or fitting, the writing has more of the recognisable moments but needed more colour, oddball charm and wit and it is spoilt by again incredibly sloppy lip-synching (especially for Alice) and irrelevant and poorly written screen captions (the Mad Hatter's Tea Party, one of the book's highlights, is particularly disappointing here).
Here, the story has the episodic nature and there are more of the basic details, scenes and characters of the book, it is also much easier to understand what's going on than the Video Brinquedo animation, but the spirit and energy of the story is lost because of the whole thing looking and feeling cheap.
All in all, a couple of good things but too much bad, especially the animation. 3/10 Bethany Cox
