← Back to Reviews
in
Alice in Wonderland
WHY'D I WATCH IT?
And the reassessments outgrabe.
Disney's adaption of Alice's Adventures Underground is met with more criticism than I feel I will ever understand.
The main point of contention seems to be it's deviation from the book, it's half-hearted combination with sequel, Alice Through The Looking Glass, and the addition of relatively forgettable musical numbers.
As much as I can understand the sentiment, the accusation that it doesn't strictly follow the book's story is ludicrous because the ridiculousness of the movie is based entirely on the ridiculousness of the source material.
We're talking about a movie with basically no plot, no arcs, and no grand overaching theme beyond child wonderment taken to an absurd degree. You can't really RUIN that story without trying to make sense of it and Disney doesn't, in fact in revels in it.
Even in between the scenes cut straight from the book, Disney finds opportunities to sprinkle in nonsense like accordion owls and spiff up otherwise flat chase sequences on paper into visually arresting bursts of imaginative surrealism. This really is an ideal movie for, if no one else, the animators at Disney, because they have a lot of wiggle room to elaborate and get really creative while still remaining comfortably within the spirit of the original work.
At the same time, I think it improves over the book in a small handful of ways as well. Ignoring the advantages it has as a visual medium, it may suffer from an absence of the wordplay prevalent throughout the original story, but in the same sense it manages to inject song where it feels appropriate which keeps the scenes light and upbeat while turning Alice into a much more likeable Straight Man. She was kind of an insensitive bitch in the book.
On top of that, the idea that Alice in Wonderland is somehow one of Disney's weakest movies doesn't jell with the fact that it was easily one Disney's most pervasive productions up until The Little Mermaid. Even if you didn't care for it personally, you can't deny that even today it's one of the biggest movie influences Disney's ever put to screen even making it THE go-to adaption of Alice in Wonderland. It's sparked one of the biggest community responses I've ever seen and probably competes only with The Lion King and Frozen.
And there's a good reason for that. I've gone on at length to explain why I dislike Eraserhead and other general "nonsense" movies, but the distinction here is that Eraserhead isn't really a nonsense movie. It's supposed to have a point (whatever that is), but Alice doesn't really have any point at all, it's just confusing and trippy for confusing and trippy's sake.
If there's ANY takeaway from Alice as a compelling addition to the medium it's given away in a subtle gesture at the beginning of the movie:
Alice in Wonderland contains plenty of words, but what it does, arguably better than any other Disney movie to date, is create a world that simultaneously makes no sense, but is so visually, creatively, and thematically indulgent that it excels in taking that world of delusional fantasy from our dreams and trapping it in a bottle.
It's like an addictive fuel for artists, there's so much fan art and fan adaptions of the material that I was SO HYPED to find out Tim Burton was going to work on it.
Tim Burton!? Beetlejuice, Nightmare Before Christmas, and Peewee's Big Adventure, Tim Burton!?
When I first heard the news my mind immediately went to the video game, American McGee's Alice, which despite being a royally **** game, managed to present an intriguingly dark and stylistic approach to Alice in Wonderland by putting her in a mental hospital and suggesting she's schizophrenic a la Return to Oz.
I was SO LOOKING FORWARD TO IT... BUT... it was terrible.
It was really ****ing terrible. What a total wash.
And get this, just a year later, American McGee put out a sequel called Madness Returns, which is not only a much better GAME, but a much better Alice in Wonderland.
I really hope American McGee makes a movie.
Final Verdict: [Pretty Good]
Alice in Wonderland
Fantasy / English / 1951
WHY'D I WATCH IT?
And the reassessments outgrabe.
WHAT'D I THINK? *SPOILERS*
"The time has come!"
Disney's adaption of Alice's Adventures Underground is met with more criticism than I feel I will ever understand.
The main point of contention seems to be it's deviation from the book, it's half-hearted combination with sequel, Alice Through The Looking Glass, and the addition of relatively forgettable musical numbers.
As much as I can understand the sentiment, the accusation that it doesn't strictly follow the book's story is ludicrous because the ridiculousness of the movie is based entirely on the ridiculousness of the source material.
We're talking about a movie with basically no plot, no arcs, and no grand overaching theme beyond child wonderment taken to an absurd degree. You can't really RUIN that story without trying to make sense of it and Disney doesn't, in fact in revels in it.
Even in between the scenes cut straight from the book, Disney finds opportunities to sprinkle in nonsense like accordion owls and spiff up otherwise flat chase sequences on paper into visually arresting bursts of imaginative surrealism. This really is an ideal movie for, if no one else, the animators at Disney, because they have a lot of wiggle room to elaborate and get really creative while still remaining comfortably within the spirit of the original work.
At the same time, I think it improves over the book in a small handful of ways as well. Ignoring the advantages it has as a visual medium, it may suffer from an absence of the wordplay prevalent throughout the original story, but in the same sense it manages to inject song where it feels appropriate which keeps the scenes light and upbeat while turning Alice into a much more likeable Straight Man. She was kind of an insensitive bitch in the book.
On top of that, the idea that Alice in Wonderland is somehow one of Disney's weakest movies doesn't jell with the fact that it was easily one Disney's most pervasive productions up until The Little Mermaid. Even if you didn't care for it personally, you can't deny that even today it's one of the biggest movie influences Disney's ever put to screen even making it THE go-to adaption of Alice in Wonderland. It's sparked one of the biggest community responses I've ever seen and probably competes only with The Lion King and Frozen.
And there's a good reason for that. I've gone on at length to explain why I dislike Eraserhead and other general "nonsense" movies, but the distinction here is that Eraserhead isn't really a nonsense movie. It's supposed to have a point (whatever that is), but Alice doesn't really have any point at all, it's just confusing and trippy for confusing and trippy's sake.
If there's ANY takeaway from Alice as a compelling addition to the medium it's given away in a subtle gesture at the beginning of the movie:
This isn't a slam against Alice's Adventures Underground, it's an admission that you don't need a traditional narrative to create something compelling or interesting, much like how Fantasia was essentially was just a collection of animations set to classical music.
It's like an addictive fuel for artists, there's so much fan art and fan adaptions of the material that I was SO HYPED to find out Tim Burton was going to work on it.
Tim Burton!? Beetlejuice, Nightmare Before Christmas, and Peewee's Big Adventure, Tim Burton!?
When I first heard the news my mind immediately went to the video game, American McGee's Alice, which despite being a royally **** game, managed to present an intriguingly dark and stylistic approach to Alice in Wonderland by putting her in a mental hospital and suggesting she's schizophrenic a la Return to Oz.
I was SO LOOKING FORWARD TO IT... BUT... it was terrible.
It was really ****ing terrible. What a total wash.
And get this, just a year later, American McGee put out a sequel called Madness Returns, which is not only a much better GAME, but a much better Alice in Wonderland.
I really hope American McGee makes a movie.