Alice in Wonderland

It is not an awful film, but not a good one either. First of all, I cannot forgive the fact that they spreed the misconception of the Queen of Hearts and the Red Queen. The Red Queen is from Alice Through The Looking Glass, not this one.

The animation was rather weak. The "race to dry" overuses ad nauseam repeated sequences. Alice's design was charmless. The house of doors seemed flat.

The staging and the storytelling are not very good. The film jumps from scene to scene in a forced, rushed way, making the story a bit confusing. The weakest sequence was the race to dry, which felt like a loss of time with the repeated scenes and the instrumental part of the song of the scene creating the feeling of a long scene for a moment not that relevant. Some scenes were funny, but on the whole the film wasn't enthralling.

There is not too much to say in favor of the characters. Most were forgettable for their bland nature. Alice fails to be sympathetic, because she feels like a robot. The Hatter and the Queen OF HEARTS are exceptions. The voice acting is mostly decent, but the poor characterization and weakened dialog tarnishes that aspect.

The music was cute and somewhat catchy, if a bit shoehorned. The "M is for Me" song was an entertaining sequence.

Finally, this is a subpar film for Jetlag Productions, worse than The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

It is a shame and I do quite like the Jetlag animations, especially Magic Gift of the Snowman, Cinderella and Little Red Riding Hood. But this Alice in Wonderland fell short for me. It is not terrible, but nothing really great either, and I do feel terrible for saying this as along with Sleeping Beauty(also better) and Little Red Riding Hood this was one of my first Jetlag animations. The animation quality for a start was disappointing, the colours weren't vibrant enough and the character designs even for Jetlag are too simplistic, especially Alice's facial expressions and eyes. There are some nice-looking scenes such as the Mad Hatter's drawing sequence and the Queen of Hearts' garden, but they're not really enough. The storytelling I found lacking, the story itself is so wonderful if very oddball and difficult perhaps to adapt, but the story seemed disconnected and dull, the March Hare and Mad Hatter scene and the drawing sequence are great, but other scenes especially the overlong and unfunny Caucus Race fail to make an impact. It was nice to see so many recognisable scenes, but few of them I found completely arresting. The characters apart from Mad Hatter and Queen of Hearts are on the whole forgettable and bland, even the Cheshire Cat, who had always been one of my favourite characters, and the dialogue in perhaps an attempt to make it appeal to children goes overboard with the simplicity, making it rather trite instead. Alice is far more interesting when she learns something on the way or tries to overcome something, but the lack of those here made this Alice un-engaging for me. The voice acting was also rather problematic, with Alice too passive and lacking any real emotion. I notice some very familiar names in the voice cast, and consider actors like Kathaleen Barr and Ian James Corlett talented, but the bland characterisations and trite dialogue disallows them I think to do anything interesting with the roles. There are a couple of bright spots though. The score is whimsical, and the three songs are great, The Caucus Race is in the weakest scene for me but makes it somewhat tolerable, M is for Me is catchy and best of all the lovely Anything Goes in Wonderland. Also as I said there are a couple of nice scenes and a few colourful characters. But overall, I was left unimpressed by this Jetlag effort. Passable but nothing really that ignited my fire. 5/10 Bethany Cox