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DVD Alice in Wonderland
This is an impressive-looking version of Lewis Carroll's story originally produced for NBC-TV. Dreading a singing recital at her parents' lavish home, Alice falls into a strange world in pursuit of a large White Rabbit. The talented child actor Tina Majorino (Corrina, Corrina) plays Alice with all the good graces but mostly wanders through the story unquestioningly. Carroll's tale of whimsical, illogical adventures is a field day for designers Roger Hall and Alan Tomkins, costumer Charles Knode, Jim Henson's Creature Shop, and director Nick Willing (Photographing Fairies. Influenced by Time Bandits and Labyrinth (the latter also designed by the Henson company), the film has a splendid array of effects, many dealing with multiple perspectives as Alice constantly changes sizes. The highlight is Whoopi Goldberg as the Cheshire Cat, a seamless mix of cat and comic. Martin Short as the Hatter and Mirandra Richardson as the Queen of Hearts seem to be having the times of their lives. This is not the definitive version of Carroll's tale, and, like the popular Disney animated version, combines some elements of Carroll's sequel, Through the Looking Glass. It is perhaps better viewing for the fan that has seen another version of the tale or read the book. --Doug Thomas
Yuk! I hated this. Sadly, it was an utter waste of more than two hours of my time, time I'll never get back. Worse, though, it was a waste of a FABULOUS cast. Good actors were ruined by poor directing and abysmal scripting. The character of Alice was completely unlikeable, as were many of the characters. George Wendt and Robbie Coltrane were the best of the actors..between them they made a fabulous Tweedledum and Tweedledee. And if you liked Miranda Richardson as Queen Elizabeth I in Blackadder, you might almost like her performance here as the Queen of Hearts, since it is eerily similar, as a mad, fickle queen who is keen to behead everyone who displeases her. But other than those few 'highlights', the movie is a flop, and my advice is to save your money and give this painful movie a BIG miss...unless you're a masochist, in which case, you'll LOVE it, especially the singing bits, which were so excruciating I wanted to run away and hide! (This SO shouldn't have been made as a musical!)
I Liked It
Although I like the animated Disney movie more than this tape, I still enjoyed this as a rental. I watched it twice, which I don't do very often with rentals. This version is a lot closer to the Wonderland book than the Disney film is. The only element it contains from "Through the Looking Glass" is the inclusion of Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. Otherwise it's very much like the Wonderland book, except for the awful changes made to the catipillar. Lots of the same characters, same sequencing, and same dialogue.
I like the special effects, even if they are a bit cheesy. Some of the costumes are great and others are not so great. The sets look very nice. I think the sets are what really makes the film capture the essence of the book.
I really like how the Gryphon and Mock Turtle made it into this movie. They really delivered.
I thought the cast was pretty interesting. Lots of big names. I still can't figure out why Whoopi Goldberg got top billing. She wasn't in the movie all that much. Then again, I guess none of the other characters were either.
Some Issues but Still the Best Alice Movie
If you are reading this you are probably trying to decide if this 'Alice' adaptation is worth watching or you may have already watched it and are wondering about the reaction of other viewers.
It is the most faithful (to the book) adaptation so far (faint praise as most efforts might as well have been original screenplays) and the sets, special effects, make-up and Muppets are light-years better than what others have tried.
But all is not right with this version of 'Wonderland' so Carroll fans should not get their hopes up too high. The adaptation involves some subtraction and a lot of addition (or as the Mock Turtle would say some 'Ambition and Distraction'). Unfortunately what was added does not begin to compensate for what was left out, it only pads the running length.
They added three scenes from 'Through the Looking Glass'. Stuck between the 'Lobster Quadrille' and the 'Who Stole the Tarts' chapters are: 'Tweedledum and Tweedledee', 'The Walrus and The Carpenter', and 'It's My Own Invention' with the White Knight. So the original story takes a not very entertaining detour-although the Walrus-Carpenter bits are fun and it is interesting to see a pre-Hagrid Robbie Coltrane as Tweedledum. Fortunately they group the three scenes together and it is not as disruptive as placing them separately at different points in the story.
Historically, the model for the characters are the illustrations that Carroll commissioned John Tenniel to carve on wood blocks. Although Carroll based the personality of his title character on ten-year-old brunette Alice Liddell, Tenniel (with Carroll's concurrence) used another model and gave the illustrated Alice her features and her long blonde hair. Although the movie generally deferred to Tenniel's illustrations, they made a critical error in casting Tina Majorino as Alice. She was 13-14 during the filming and looks ludicrous in the role. She was also quite homely at that age and you are thankful that the director used mostly wide shots so you don't have her face filling the screen. Thankfully her acting is so flat that she does not call much attention to herself. But the overall effect would have been so much better if they had used a younger actress (could they have made it three years earlier and used a 10-11 year-old Kiera Knightley).
The movie works in spite of a poor Alice, in large part because of the other major deviation from the Tenniel look. That would be casting Miranda Richardson as the Queen of Hearts. Instead of a fat and ugly queen we get a delicately beautiful one, and a hauntingly over-the-top performance. But it works because the performance is consistent with Carroll's idea of the queen as: 'a sort of embodiment of ungovernable passion-a blind and aimless Fury'.
And in her surreal make-up you can't take your eyes off Richardson (you literally focus on her face and see nothing else that is in the frame). Her performance was so inspired that she has been playing fairy tale queens ever since.
All the Muppet characters are excellent but for some reason they made Bill the Lizard a man instead of a muppet lizard. Did the producer owe someone a favor? Bill's scene at the Rabbits's House is the third best in the movie; only the croquet match and the trial are better.
And they messed with Carroll's dialogue for no useful purpose or discernible logic. For example they kept all the 'Mock Turtle's' puns, which are hard to follow even in print, while deleting some of the best lines from Alice's scene with the 'Cheshire Cat'; and the tea-party dialogue (and editing) is a shambles. You can't always tell when an original line was omitted but you can tell when something was added by the hack they hired to do the adaptation-all are stupid and some so modern that they are like hearing an off-key note on a flute.
Carroll's dialogue and Alice's thoughts are really the essence of the story.
Someday a director will shoot this thing with mega-reaction shots of Alice (played by a pleasing looking 'young' actress) and with voiceovers of her thoughts-then we will have something that really communicates Alice's curiosity, courage, kindness, intelligence, dignity, and sense of justice. Most important is to communicate her simple wonder (the only wonder about Majorino is how she got the role). The reader was meant to identify with these qualities but only Disney's Alice effectively exhibited them. It's sad when it is easier to identify with the book and with a cartoon Alice than with any of the actresses who have played the role.
Although some part of each chapter is included (Down the Rabbit-Hole, The Pool of Tears, The Caucus-Race, Little Bill, Advice from a Caterpillar, Pig and Pepper, A Mad Tea-Party, The Queen's Croquet-Ground, The Mock Turtle's Story, The Lobster Quadrille, Who Stole the Tarts, and Alice's Evidence), the bookend pieces of the story where Alice is not dreaming are missing. Instead there is a 'Wizard of Oz' kind of scene with the actors out of costume, playing guests at a garden party. This is done entirely to tie in with the writer's annoying artless addition of a preachy "the show must go on" theme which works to deflate each scene in which it is inserted.
This is the only unforgivable change to the story. Wonderland was not a process of self-discovery or personal development, it was a gift to the real Alice (and to future children) and should always end with the thoughts of Alice's older sister after hearing the details of the dream: 'Lastly, she pictured to herself how this same little sister of hers would, in the after-time, be herself a grown woman, and how she would keep, through all the years, the simple and loving heart of her childhood; and how she would gather about her other little children, and make their eyes bright and eager with many a strange tale, perhaps even with the dream of Wonderland of long ago; and how she would feel with all their simple sorrows, and find a pleasure in all their simple joys, remembering her own child-life, and the happy summer days'. This is Carroll telling us why he made up the story.
Bottom line it is the best of the Alice films, a little too long but still worth watching-especially for the Miranda Richardson scenes.
This epic 10-hour miniseries from the Emmy-winning writer of Gulliver's Travels was a ratings bust on television, but on video and DVD, where it can be enjoyed at one's leisure, it has a better chance to cast its magical spell. Kimberly Williams has never been more enchanting than as Virginia, a waitress who still lives with her janitor father (John Larroquette) and yearns for something exciting to happen to her. Her wish comes true when she and her father are transported from New York City into a dimension that, with apologies to Rod Serling, can only be called the Fairy Tale Zone; nine kingdoms populated by characters from fairy tales of yore. They team up with a dog who's really a prince--Wendell, grandson of Snow White--changed into canine form by the evil Queen (Dianne... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Herbert Wise - David Carson DVD Release Date: Released the 28 May 2002 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Imaginatively rendered but slightly chilly, this 1951 Disney adaptation of the Lewis Carroll classic is also appropriately surreal. Alice (voiced by Kathryn Beaumont) has all the anticipated experiences: shrinking and growing, meeting the White Rabbit, having tea with the Mad Hatter, etc. Characterization is very strong, and the Disney team worked hard to bring screen personality to Carroll's eccentric creations. For a Disney film, however, it seems more the self-satisfied sum of its inventiveness than a truly engaging experience. --Tom KeoghMore Info about this DVD Director(s): Wilfred Jackson - Clyde Geronimi - Hamilton Luske DVD Release Date: Released the 27 January 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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There's a war goin' on in this bit o' blarney, but it's more than the feud between the fairies and the leprechauns, upon which most of the overwrought tale hangs. It's also a struggle between competing, derivative story lines in this bloated, plodding film that can't decide what it wants to be. It's part Romeo and Juliet, via the seemingly doomed romance of the princess fairy and teenage leprechaun; part contemporary romance, with an uncomfortable-looking Randy Quaid in the romantic lead; and a large part unfocused fable that fills out its Irish stew with a feud reminiscent of Ireland's Catholic-Protestant conflict while throwing in fantastical Braveheart-style battle scenes and Riverdance-like interludes. The most stunning scenes are the fairy sequences that take... More Info about this DVD Director(s): John Henderson DVD Release Date: Released the 14 March 2000 Usually ships in 24 hours
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When Sultan Said discovers his wife locked in a passionate embrace with his only brother, he flings his sword at the prince and accidentally murders his adulterous queen. Tortured by his wife's ghost, the maniacal and cowardly sultan must marry another to save his kingdom, but to avoid future matrimonial disgrace he plans to have her executed the morning after the wedding. Fortunately for him, Scheherezade, the grand vicar's daughter played by the lovely Mili Avital, jumps at the challenge and the chance to marry her childhood love. A master storyteller, the newly crowned sultana escapes death night after night with her mesmerizing tales of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, Aladdin and his Magic Lamp, countless warriors, supernatural duels, and ferocious genies.
Although the main story... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Steve Barron DVD Release Date: Released the 07 August 2001 Usually ships in 24 hours
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