Posted: Fri Mar 03, 2006 3:58 pm
by Disneykid
The answer to why Alice didn't make it into Disney's top 14 top home video releases is simple: it was always available to the public. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Fantasia, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King were all released on VHS only once before they received (or will receive) Platinum treatment. Pinocchio, Bambi, Cinderella, Peter Pan, Lady and the Tramp, Sleeping Beauty, 101 Dalmatians, The Jungle Book, and The Little Mermaid were released only twice on VHS before they received (or will receive) Platinum treatment (well, Sleeping Beauty got a third VHS release to coincide with the Special Edition, but by then it was already put into the Platinum collection). Alice in Wonderland, on the other hand, has been released on VHS four times, the second one lasting a good five years on the market. People didn't flock to buy it because it was never in danger of being out of print like other Disney films were. This is also why Dumbo isn't a Platinum despite it being fairly popular amongst the public and being considered one of the Disney's crown jewels by movie critics.
I'm grateful that Alice got the beautiful restoration and solid supplemental treatment that it did (even though I rag on the latter a lot). I, too, wish it were a better seller so that it could have been put into the Platinum Collection. If that had happened, Alice would've received a commentary track (unless it was released in the post-Cinderella era of Platinums...), a new retrospective documentary, and at least the majority of the song demos and galleries (rather than a tiny percentage of both). Disney's been very good in porting over laserdisc features to their DVDs, but Alice was kind of short changed, though I'm thankful that it wasn't as drastically shortchanged as The Lion King was.
Disney Duster's Alice in Wonderland Review!
Posted: Tue Nov 23, 2010 8:51 pm
by Disney Duster
Sick with a cold a few weeks ago, I finally opened my Alice in Wonderland: Special Un-Anniversary DVD, which I'm mad that I bought before finding out about the 60th Anniversary Blu-ray, but, quite happily nontheless, popped it into the DVD player to watch while on the couch.
I loved it. Very much. Ad I expected I would. And was surprised to find how much more I did. I'm probably going to use the word "loved" a lot for this review, but put up with it. This film just makes you love it. I don't love it more than my favorite film, but this film is enchanting.
Let's begin with the beginning. The opening song. I LOVE that song. It has been one of the things I remembered most about it! In fact, lately I wondered if it was too similar to Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet! It turned out it's not really like it, but the memory is a funny thing. I guess the very, very beginning is a little like it. But I just love that practically screamed first high note of "AL-lice! In Wonderland..." I think this choral music is rather different and, well, mad or odd from the other Disney choral opening songs! And now I can say it's one of my favorite opening songs. And one of their best songs and openings.
The visuals in the opening are fantastic, too. They made me feel, as I did as a kid as well, that there was going to be this world that was...dangerous, mysterious, yet great. Something just...beyond. I love how it shows us what is coming, and almost in a dark way, and somehow the visuals have splotlights like illuminating the world in the dark, so we get a glimpse of the underground world.
After a very beautiful shot of the valley from the church in London, we meet Alice, and I was a little like , "This is how we meet her?" I had thought from my memories that she was on the ground, very bored and almost miserable from her lessons, maybe even yawning or about to fall asleep (hence, how she dreams Wonderland). As a quick note, I thought maybe if she was made so miserable by her lesson we would more feel for her wanting to go to Wonderland, but, more on this later.
I absolutely adored Dinah's reactions to everything Alice did, and I loved Alice's song. I like it in place of "Beyond the Laughing Sky" just fine if not finer. Through the song I felt "She's talking about Wonderland, and it's going to happen"...with the choral voices, perhaps "coming" from Wonderland?, it just felt cool and great. And she even was kind of sad at the end, wishing for a world of her own.
The ripple of Alice turning into the White Rabbit is a fantasticly imagined way of doing that part, and one I remembered striking me as a kid. I like how the chose to do the hole, kind of a burrow by a lovely patch of flowers, and the way Alice is determined to get through no matter how small, and, they way she screams her line as she falls, was surprisingly very funny. And the Dinah waves to her, too cute.
I have always loved the fall with the furniture, and all the changing colors (reminds me of “Sing Sweet Nightingale”) and I absolutely loved it this time. It’s truly one of my favorite parts. And then the way she landed on her head, you would think she would break her head, but this is Wonderland, so she lands nicely and funnily and it’s a great touch.
Another favorite part of mine is the whole scene with the door, table, and edibles. It’s very creative and adding to Wonderland’s magic, mystery, and even the idea that this is in Alice’s mind, to have the table appear out of the black recesses, and also how the key just appears when the door says she forgot the key, it’s like Wonderland is playing with her, and it’s not very fair, but it’s funny as well as mysterious and whimsical.
It was interesting to see a girl’s crying in a Disney movie, or at all, played more lightly, so that it’s also humorous, and you don’t feel bad. In the pool of tears, the way Alice bobs in and even goes under the water adds a bit of realism and slight danger to the film. The whole scene with Alice trying to get help and the Dodo and others not really getting it or paying attention kind of felt like similar moments that happen to us in real life, kind of horrible but here played lightly so, once again, we feel no worries.
The Tweedles were great, I found them very delightful and funny. The way they bop and make the sounds, it’s something that could be almost gross but, it’s just amusing and shows how the Wonderland characters can move unlike real people. The Walrus and the Carpenter, well, the middle of the night thing was weird, I didn’t even get that as they weren’t really in the middle, more like they went from day to night, but the idea was at least interesting. So too were the way the oysters were done, in design, and how their feet weren’t connected to them but moved with them. I felt bad when the mother oyster was shut up and lost her children who were innocently naughty, and the way the Walrus eats the baby oysters is a pretty sad, even horrifying thing, but the way this film does it, it doesn’t feel too bad, as I guess nothing in this film does, except possibly the climax, and I don’t know if I would have felt more badly for the characters as a child.
I like how Alice sneaks away from the tweedles, it felt so...almost scared she'd get caught, but alos not, and...I just can't describe some of the great feelings this film and it's atmosphere give.
Alice just may be the smartest heroine, or one of them, that Disney's ever created. Perhaps her eating the cookie in the rabbit's house was a little dumb after what happened earlier, but Alice constantly has to fugure out what is best to do in the world of Wonderland, even thinking of eating a carrot in a garden that she had no clues about. She gets things and learns, and very wonderfully displayed when she whispers "C-A-T" to the Mad Hatter (such clever, witty, interesting interaction is also something you unfortunately don't see the likes of in many Disney movies). She's always speaking her mind, and showing her emotion, and even though she's proper, (and in a way it stifles her anger like it stifled, say, Cinderella's and other heroines), she makes mistakes and accidents and isn't perfect. And she is one of the best animated, in skill and personality, too. I mean, some of her faces are great and just fantastic. When she licks the mushroom, she's playing with Wonderland. Perhaps because this heroine got set in a whacky world, she was a Disney girl allowed to be very fun, and all the better for it. She's endearing, too! And she even fights/talks back. But Alice was pretty much just real, just like a real girl. Okay, one quip is that she didn't feel very much like a little girl, like she said she was, but that was only a misnomer that I felt for like one second. But all the little expressions she makes, even her uniqueness, just make up for anything like that. What great animating, acting on paper.
The White Rabbit who I might normally think was too much of a fuddy duddy is cute and charming and funny as the others, and the bird in the tree's reactions are hilarious. I thought the scene with garden flowers, and the song, was quite beautiful, or at least lovely, and that one white rose msyteriously gives some magical, special impression. The caterpillar was great and I love his magical smoke, and one of my favorite things even I remember seeing as child was the puff of smoke that sticks to Alice's foot that she has to stomp off! I wonder if the crocodile he makes out of smoke, with it's hands, was inspiration for the smoky hands that take Ariel's voice in The Little Mermaid. Great animation here, though what is saying that in a film full of some of the greatest animation?! The mad tea party, though, is in very, very many ways the deserved highlighted scene of this whole film.
For one, the backgrounds of long tables and many, many pots does feel incredibly cool and far out, and all the things they do with the objects on the table are so unique and delightful, you want to join in but watching is fine, too. Even the small details like Alice dipping much of her face into the sugar covered tea is something that stuck out to me as a kid when I first saw it. It just so...Wonderland! No, it's just so Disney's Wonderland!
The Mad Hatter, March Hare, and Doormouse may perhaps be the most great characters to watch (along with the Chesire Cat!). My mom laughed at the "Don't let's be silly!" line that Disneykid had in his signature. It's a rather genius nonsensical line! And that black in white thing, it just shows the great lengths they went to making this a far out there other world created with experimental filmaking. It was almost kind of freaky. But the whole tea party is just a gas, one of the most enjoyable things to watch that isn't merely hilarious but all other kinds of delights.
The Chesire Cat, I was worried that when I recognized him as Winnie the Pooh, I would hear it and it would ruin him for me. But his voice-acting, being another character, the animation, and just Disney magic, made a completely different character that is just confoundedly wonderful to be bewildered and amused by. I'm glad that even after Tim Burton's Chesire Cat, this one was still in his own league. Perhaps the better one.
And his antics almost hint at a relationship with Alice. He wants to be bad with her, perhaps amuse her, perhaps stop the wicked queen with her? He even seems to want to help her (also like the Caterpillar), or perhaps he just wants to play with her. And in the end of the film, it even seems that all the characters have some sort of fond (or fiendish) attachment to her, so that you feel Alice in a way did make friends, so it could work as a film where a girl gains something from all she meets. Or maybe this is a big almost, for even though I could see Alice being glad to return and see the Mad Hatter and Doormouse and Chesire Cat, I don't know if that would really work out, and definately not for other characters.
The Queen of Hearts was indeed great. Who could have thought this woman was the kindest, sweetest, friendliest fairy godmother? What an excellent voice actress. And what an excellent Queen of Hearts. She's too different from Helena Bonham Carter's too compare, both are excellent, but let's just say Verna Felton's performances delivers in, well, spades, and is memorable even with less screentime or background and whatever nonsense Linda Woolverton wrote (I kid, I kid!). In fact, while I'm at it we had a better Mad Hatter and a much better Alice in this Disney version, too! Sorry Johnny, still love ya!
It seems when Alice tells the queen she's not a queen at all, that it is a social comment on how people in power can be, well, not very good. This subversive question authority moment in a Disney film is great. In fact, even the king is under the thumb of the queen in what I have always known to be a very unsexist, or rather, sexist to the men element that makes this film feel confortably unproblematic and subversive in the gender role area Disney films usually are said to have bad models of.
The backgrounds and design are certainly a unique, creative sight to behold and are among any animated film, no, any film's best in terms of making the film great and being a good reason to watch. You want to explore that world, but luckily, you feel you have been transported into it a great amount.
The animation itself I feel is in a lot of ways in almost all places an improvement on the previous film's, Cinderella. Perhaps it's how things seem to move more freely but also structured beautifully, and something about the lines and perhaps the draftsmanship looks excellent. The backgrounds, too, feel a little more there, a little more detailed and fleshed out. Maybe the whole thing has more polish, and, I think I'm even a bit jealous it got that. This is I think also a film where the animation and the design really had to work together, and it's much better for it. And who would of thought they could make red eyes (of the rabbit) cute?
One more thing about the film is that astounding scene at the end. What a great amount of ingenuity and kind of letting the mind explode. And one of my favorite parts, that I remember as a child first seeing it, is that part where the door says "You are outside", and we wonder along with Alice "What?" and then she looks and sees herself out, sleeping. It actually kind of hits you, it's kind of powerful and even kind of gives you chills.
This whole film I think is a perfect movie for watching over and over and just enjoying it. Not for learning some big life-changing lesson, and it doesn't need to because honestly, once you've learned that lesson, what else is there but to get feelings from the film? Okay, so sometimes movies teach us lessons we like to take in again and again, but this film is like a great ride. Alice can leave Wonderland, have tea, have her lessons, got to bed, and then go into Wonderland and feel fun and other things again, and we can too. And that's a great thing.
Perhaps it would be nice if the film had "Beyond the Laughing Sky" and, okay, maybe a bit of more heart and a sadder, truer emotional song in "Very Good Advice" which I remember being very sad at as a kid but I think a little less so last watch, and maybe it should feel like some more amazing, perhaps life-changing journey or lesson, but I just don't know. Maybe we only think that because it's such a different film and we have all these other films that have things like that to compare it to. But as it is, and as I said, in a way this version of Alice in Wonderland feels at least in one way, in some way, in a good way, perfect.
Any moment or character or thing I didn't mention, it was all a delight, or a wonder, or magical, or some other good feeling, and one that I know only Disney could provide, too. It's something I'm so very glad to own and have.
I am excited to own this on Blu-ray when it comes out, but it's such a great film in all it does, I don't really need to worry about the picture quality or anything, it's just that it'll be an even more spectacular experience in HD.
I would like to see this again when I'm not sick, and maybe when it's on Blu-ray, and also after I've read other people reviews and thoughts (mainly Disneykid's!), and then see what my thoughts are after that. But until then, the movie was so memorable, my mind is delighted re-playing scenes by itself.
). I have always wondered if it was an editing error, or if they kept it because it suited the characters, but anyways.