My Movie Review on Alice in Wonderland (1951) · 7:26pm May 27th, 2020
Salutations, Kemosabes.
This is your friendly film, TV show, and episode reporter here with another review.
Today, I'm gonna be giving you guys my take of Disney's "Alice in Wonderland". The animated version from 1951 to be precise.
Here's the summary of this tale:
Alice is a restless British girl who yearns for adventure and excitement, even wishing that she didn't have to live a life full of studying. Unexpectedly, though, she spots a peculiar white rabbit wearing clothes and glasses, and carrying a watch. Curious, she follows the rabbit into a small hole, where she falls into a strange and bizarre world called Wonderland and encounters a series of diverse characters.
Will Alice ever be able to catch up to the white rabbit? Or will she never find him?
What's more, will Alice ever be able to go home?
It's been an awfully long time since I last saw this movie, but this was another Disney cartoon that I remembered fondly growing up with. Making an analysis of it and the live-action version done by Tim Burton has been on my to-do list for quite some time, so I figured it wouldn't hurt to do it now.
When I read about the negative reception this movie received upon being released in theaters and its eventual cult following long after that, I didn't know what to think of it when I saw it again. Once I saw it recently, though...I WAS BLOWN AWAY BY IT!
Everything about this movie was unexpectedly fun from start to finish.
For instance, the direction by Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson, and Hamilton Luske, and the story by Milt Banta, Del Connell, Bill Cattrell, Joe Grant, Winston Hibler, Dick Huemer, Dick Kelsey, Tom Oreb, Bill Peet, Erdman Penner, Joe Rinaldi, Ted Sears, and John Walbridge, were quite the entertaining package. And as with much of Disney's projects from the very beginning to the late 1960s, I can tell that Walt Disney was definitely not afraid of extending himself creatively as producer of the film.
The humor and tone were among the things I couldn't help but take note of. It was amazing how the production team made something that a lot of times got frenetic and didn't take itself seriously to be one of Disney's most compelling and accomplished animated films, and the comedy throughout was so well-done it was hard not to laugh. Plus, the film's themes and morals about curiosity were marvelously spot-on, and there was even an unexpected amount of heart.
The animation was amazing, if I may add. The liveliness of it all felt like it could give a Looney Tunes short a run for its money, and the animators were obviously not afraid of pushing the envelope and taking risks. As a product of its time, the animation was accomplished enough to be comparable to modern day animated movies.
The music by Oliver Wallace, and the songs that were made for the movie, were magnificent. When I read that Walt Disney wanted to incorporate poems by the author of the book by making songs based on them, I was amazed by the results of it all. I particularly enjoyed the bounce the songs had and how much the lyrics mixed together like peas in a pod, and the melodies they were accompanied with were wonderful.
Finally, the voice acting, casting, characters, and character development were extremely well-done. The performers fit their parts like a glove, and the amount of personality, emotion, energy, and humor they incorporated was remarkable. In my opinion, the most entertaining performances and characters were Ed Wynn as the Mad Hatter, Jerry Colonna as the March Hare, Sterling Halloway as the Cheshire Cat, Richard Hadyn as the Caterpillar, and J. Pat O'Malley as Tweedledee, Tweedledum, the Walrus, and the Carpenter. Plus, the characters of Alice and the Queen of Hearts had dynamic development, and Kathryn Beaumont and Verna Felton performed their characters wonderfully.
In conclusion, "Alice in Wonderland (1951)" is a wonderful film and it's one of Disney's most visually accomplished and liveliest of works. In more ways than one, the film provided quite a fun ride.
So, I rate "Alice in Wonderland (1951)" five out of five stars.
Curiously, the film gained a positive reception when shown on Walt Disney Presents in 1958. Seemingly, critics changed their minds in the intervening seven years.
I agree with your comments. This one sticks really prominently in my memory, partly because it was one of a handful of Disney adaptations of British stories (Mary Poppins is the other obvious one).
One of the most craziest disney movies for a reason.
One of the least favorites for me.
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How come?
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too weird in everyway. Just dont like it.
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It's crazy for a reason:
Every character Alice meets in Wonderland symbolizes a type of drug use or mental illness.
Example: The Mad Hatter is suffering from Mercury Poisoning, a reference to back when Mercury was a main component for polishing fancy hats.
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That’s...a rather disturbing way to view the Wonderland residents. I don’t even think that’s what the production crew or author modeled them after.
Ever since when I was younger, I really enjoyed this film, and as I grew older, I love it.
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There are even diseases named after the book: Alice In Wonderland syndrome (AWS), where sufferers perceive parts of their body to be changing size, and Alice In Wonderland-like syndrome (AWLS), where people misperceive the size and distance of objects around them.
Lewis Carroll explicitly claimed that he did not write a book using caricatures of hard drugs or mental illness, and that the intention was to entertain; but the links drawn between the subjects and the characters make the claim dubious enough to spark debate over it.
It doesn't help that when Disney re-released the 1951 version of Alice in Wonderland in 1974, they embraced the psychedelic interpretation as a marketing strategy, breathing new life into the discussion.
But to be fair: the standards of what it meant to have a bizarre story were very different in 1865, when the book was originally published.
I only saw the live action one, I want to see this one
You know I actually wrote a story about a short story about a Texas bluebonnet venturing to Wonderland and becoming a resident there. His name was Pelvis Bluebonnet, and he's partly based off of Elvis Presley.
It was this film that inspired the story.