Alicia en el país de las maravillas

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

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.

I was a little worried when I went to watch the film version of Alice In Wonderland, because I just read the novel and Disney has a tendency to dumb down the material that they make into their films with goofball romantic nonsense and cutesy talking animals. While I did get more than the traditional share of talking animals with this film (as well as a variety of other inanimate objects), the film stayed more faithful to the original story than is generally expected from a Disney film. On the other hand, this WAS made in 1951, which makes me wonder what a more modern adaptation would look like.

I read Alice In Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass for English 180 (Children's Literature) at the University of California, Davis, so needless to say, I read it with more of a literary appreciation than is generally applied to children's books. I was pleased to see so many of the characters from the second novel in this version of Alice In Wonderland (such as the Cheshire Cat, the talking flowers in the garden, and Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum), although I must admit that I was slightly disappointed to see that Through The Looking Glass has been assimilated into this version of Alice In Wonderland rather than adapted into its own film, which I think is an honor that it certainly deserves.

As far as being a full length feature (although rather short at roughly 75 minutes), however, I think that this movie does justice to both stories, converting them into a single story rather smoothly, and only leaving out things that will only really be missed by people who know the novels enough to be disappointed that certain things were not included. I, for example, would have loved to see the whole chess story in Through The Looking Glass included in the film (there certainly was time for it), where Alice travels through Wonderland on her quest to become a Queen herself, but I am more than happy with how this film turned out.

One of the only things that I noticed about this film that did not match up to the quality of the novels is that the books have so much more in them for adults than the movie does. There are so many tricks with language pulled in the books, such as in the conversations with Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum as well as several other characters, that it really makes you think about the English language as a game with which an endless variety of tricks can be played. In the film, this is hugely downplayed, even if only because it is done visually and the language tricks pass by so fast that kids are almost certain to miss them and even the most attentive of adults will have a hard time keeping up with them.

As a whole, however, Alice In Wonderland is so wildly entertaining that the loss of some of the literary substance does not detract from it as a terrific tale of adventure and discovery, certain to be enjoyed by people of all ages. I have heard plenty of rumors that Lewis Carroll was on any of a variety of drugs while he wrote the novels (and plenty of rumors that he wasn't on any drugs at all), but there are certainly some things in the books and in the movie that could have only been conjured up by the most, um, eccentric of imaginations. We may never know for sure, but at least we have some wonderful entertainment.

Read the books to your kids.

Despite the hostile reviews from many other Disney fans, I like Alice in Wonderland. Maybe it's because I've never read the original Lewis Carrol novels, or because some people take novel translations too seriously. The only other Alice movie I saw was the one aired on NBC in 1999, which also has its share of defense and offense. I liked that one (only because it included a lot of what wasn't used here), but this Disney version has always been my favorite. But then again, many of the original crew who worked on this movie--even Walt Disney himself--hated this movie. I wonder why? Disney usually does a marvelous job of creating quality cartoons & movies. I can see some of what got people ticked off, but if the characters in Alice in Wonderland were so unlikeable (the major gripe of many viewers), how did Disney let it be so? Perhaps given the amount of time they put into making this film (about 10 years, excluding the WWII Era), the Disney artists could only do so much before wearily going with one thing, and seeing what happens.

This film is somewhat different from most Disney movies. Alice is the only true hero, two characters (Alice's sister and Dinah) barely make their mark in the story, and practically every character Alice meets in Wonderland are real psychos, whom by the end of the story, are all against her (a million to one). But just about all of the characters (even Alice herself) were having mood swings. A few of those whom Alice encountered were doing such things as to entertain her, while others were either doing things to persecute her, get her in trouble, or just tick her off. I can see (to an extent) why Alice was the unhappy camper on some levels, because she didn't get the wonderland as she had envisioned, but instead one big nitemare. The whole idea was for Alice to find a way to escape from the boring real-world, then decide between staying with her fantasies, or going back to reality. After all, there's always an equal but opposite reaction for every action.

There were numerous shots of Alice sedately giving attention to some of the characters' strange habits, rather than enjoying her trip, and others in where she was either mad or sad to be the main passive victim in the story. This all led up to a scene in where Alice begins her trek home, and leads a melancholy moment when she gets lost in the Tulgey Woods. Things didn't get much better for her when she met the Queen of Hearts...

All of the characters were individually twisted, but most were strangely funny. The Tweedle brothers' story of the Walrus and the Carpenter was pretty weird (as were the bros themselves), and the flowers seemed friendly at first, but when they realized that Alice wasn't a flower, they instantly turn on her (notice how the Rose didn't do much to help her). The caterpillar was smoking from a hookah (a popular drug reference during the 1970's), and got easily p***ed at anything Alice did to him (such as laughing at his expense when his arms or legs weren't in unison). The Mad Hatter and March Hare both had an unusual way of hosting a tea party (the part where they destroy the White Rabbit's watch was really funny).

The Cheshire Cat seemed to be a nuisance the first time, then a brief friend, and later became a troublemaker. The Queen of Hearts was big, fat, ugly, and screamed at almost anything out of line (That must have really put a strain on Verna Felton's voice!), while the King of Hearts was small, meek, and practically powerless (the polar opposite). There was also a ton of other strange characters taking unexplained hostility towards Alice, but I found most of those incidents to be the main vein of humor in this film. While many of these characters were unfriendly for the bulk of the film, nothing came to be as scary as did a couple scenes from Pinocchio. But based from this lengthy paragraph, this overload on story structure is probably another reason (along with the twisted character developments) as to why Alice in Wonderland came to be hated by critics, movie-goers, and the Disney crew upon its first release.

Two of the more positive things about Alice in Wonderland are the artwork and the music. The background arts are pretty stylish (thanks to Mary Blair), and many designs I didn't catch until just recently seeing the movie again.

The character designs and animation are also beautiful. The designs on Alice (the lone protagonist) were an overall visual standout (thanks to the then-teenage Kathryn Beaumont), and the designs of most of the Wonderland characters were great, too. I also liked the animation of the cards heralding the Queen's arrival (excellent choreography & colors). Most of the songs were wonderful, particularly "In a Golden Afternoon". These are the two elements that kept some Disney fans' attention to a strange movie, even to this day.

Overall, Alice in Wonderland is a good movie, and I can see some of why a lot of people hate it. I just wish that there was more to the "real-world" frames to the story, as in the time Alice was with her big sister and Dinah. The opening scenes could've used more impact on the main idea, while the closing scenes shouldn't have been so abrupt. During her trip, Alice made several references to Dinah, although the cat's barely visible role was being Alice's best friend. The beginning of Alice's nitemare (when she was chasing the White Rabbit) doesn't get much of a response, but the interesting parts begin once she meets the Doorknob. The ending (when the Queen of Hearts calls Alice to be killed, while every Wonderland character she met turned against her) was what reminded those who hated this movie that it was all a bad dream. More thankfully for everyone, the movie had a happy ending (as per usual for any Disney movie). But as I was saying earlier, there was a lot of what most people hated that I thought was funny, but I too felt that the story need a little more polishing. While I'm against the recent round of sequels Disney has been making, I'm a little curious of what they have planned for Alice in Wonderland. But as Alice said in the movie: "Curiosity often leads to trouble."

Many kids have grown up on this Disney version of Alice in Wonderland (like most other Disney movies), and it'll still be that way for years to come. Again, despite the hatred this movie has gotten for more than 50 years, I still like it.

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.