The Disney Discussion - Alice in Wonderland

Over the course of the year, we'll be spending our Wednesdays with Walt, having a discussion about each of Disney's animated films...

Movie #13 of The Disney Discussion

Alice in Wonderland (1951)

Featuring the voice talents of Kathryn Beaumont, Ed Wynn, Jerry Colonna, Richard Haydn, Sterling Holloway, Verna Felton, J. Pat O'Malley, and Bill Thompson

Directed by Clyde Geronomi, Wilfred Jackson, and Hamilton Luske; Ben Sharpsteen (production supervisor)
***This film is currently streaming on Netflix***

Summary (in 150 words or less):

When a young girl named Alice becomes bored while practicing her school lessons, she follows a frantic White Rabbit down a rabbit hole to the crazy world of Wonderland where she meets a nutty cast of characters who, through their absurdity and weirdness, make her realize her life wasn't as bad as it seemed.

Let the Discussion Begin...

Alice in Wonderland is the Walt Disney Company's thirteenth full-length animated feature film and was released on July 26, 1951.

With a budget of $3 million, Alice in Wonderland's $2.4 million take was considered a disappointment and the critics greeted the film with lukewarm reviews.  However, as the 1960s and 1970s arrived, the film garnered a newfound appreciation amongst the "drug culture" in college towns and Disney gave the film its first theatrical rerelease in 1974.

Alice in Wonderland was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Scoring of a Musical Film, but failed to win.

The Characters

(The Best...The Worst...The Villains...)

With the lack of a really strong story, Alice in Wonderland can take pride in the fact that its entire zany cast of characters is skillfully animated and perfectly voiced.  In the past, Disney had filmed live actors performing particular scenes for his animators to study to make movements as real as possible.  With the production of this film, a full-length live action film was shot featuring many of the actors who provided the characters' voices which is part of the reason the film took over five years to create.

Our title character continues the trend of having a little bit of a spunky personality like the title character in Cinderella, but admittedly here it sometimes comes off as childish obstinance, although I think that's the point in that they're showing her precociously adventurous spirit.  Still, voiced incredibly charmingly by Kathryn Beaumont, Alice is the one sane element amidst a bunch of loonies and her calmness is sometimes a welcome respite from the chaos that surrounds her.

Directing animator Ward Kimball (one of Disney's famous Nine Old Men who helped shape the face of Disney animation in its early stages) stated that he feels that the film "degenerated into a loud-mouthed vaudeville show...with each [animator] trying to top the other guy and make his sequences the biggest and craziest in the show.  This had a self-cancelling effect on the final product."  This is certainly true and while characters such as The Mad Hatter, the Caterpillar, the Cheshire Cat, and Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum are all amusing and expertly animated, their personalities are all trying to vie for the audience's affection much moreso than in other Disney films.  Once again, the animation techniques on display are top notch as is the vocal talent behind the characters (particularly Ed Wynn's hilarious well-known take on the Mad Hatter), but there's no depth to anyone which is a bit of a shame.

The villain of the piece -- the Queen of Hearts -- is actually the last main character that Alice meets, not making an appearance until an hour into the seventy-five minute film.  Bombastic with a strong personality, the Queen is quite funny despite a seemingly one-joke presence revolving around chopping off people's heads.  

The Music

Music plays a key role in Alice in Wonderland.  I'm not sure five minutes go by without another tune popping up as seemingly every character Alice meets has his own tune to accompany his segment of the film.  I say this not as a detriment to the film.  In fact, while you won't necessarily be humming every tune upon the film's completion, I found them all amusing in their own ways.  From the incredible simplicity of something like the Caterpillar's "A E I O U" which is essentially just a repetition of a bunch of vowels in a Ravi Shankar-ish Indian tone or the sheer nonsense of a throwaway like "The Caucus Race" which is a string of prepositions, there's something fun going on with the music of Alice in Wonderland.

One of my favorite songs in the mix is "In a World of My Own" (written by Bob Hilliard and Sammy Fain) -- the first one we hear in the film following the title song during the credits.  Sung by Alice in a calm and mannered tone, she daydreams about being whisked away from the mundane upper crust British world she calls home and venturing into a land where "cats and rabbits would reside in fancy little houses" and "all the flowers would have extra special powers."  Foreshadowing what is to come for her, the scene was beautifully animated and had me promisingly looking forward to things (which is why it's all the more unfortunate I was a bit disappointed).

My Favorite Scene

Building off of the music section, my two favorite scenes contain two great songs.  Certainly the most amusing moment in the film is the famous moment when Alice stumbles upon the Mad Hatter and March Hare's tea party during which they celebrate their unbirthdays.  With Ed Wynn and Jerry Colonna's fantastic vocals, "The Unbirthday Song" is a rousing number (and probably the most famous in the film) that integrates perfectly into the scene surrounding it.  In a zany film like this, you'd assume laughs would come rapidly, but that really isn't the case.  However, I was smiling from ear to ear when these kooky guys took center stage.  Although I've already lauded him, it really can't be mentioned enough how much Ed Wynn contributes to this scene with his take on the Mad Hatter.  It's an iconic performance that holds up many decades later.

On the other end of the spectrum,  my second favorite moment in the film occurs when a very small Alice wanders into a bed of flowers and encounters some of the most delightful creatures Disney animators created for the film.  As the towering flowers chat with their new human friend (whom they later determine to be a weed in an attempt to get rid of her), they sing the almost lullaby-esque "On a Golden Afternoon" which introduces us to bread-and-butterflies, rocking horseflies, dog and cat-erpillars, and literal recreations of "tiger" lilies to name a few.  Perhaps these creatures were found in Lewis Carroll's book, but the animators' abilities to cleverly bring them to life were a treat.

Random Thoughts

• Lewis Carroll's name is misspelled in the opening credits as "Lewis Carrol."
• Verna Felton moved from the lovely and kind Fairy Godmother in Cinderella to the nasty Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland in back-to-back Disney animated films.

Final Analysis

(Does It Belong in the Revered Disney Pantheon and How Does It Stack Up to Past Films?)

While the Alice in Wonderland story never really appealed to me as a child, I was hoping a change of heart may have taken place as I added on a few years allowing me to appreciate Disney's take on this supposedly classic children's tale.  Unfortunately, that didn't pan out.  While certainly better than the Johnny Depp-starring version of a few years ago, the surreal episodic nature of Lewis Carroll's story just doesn't work for me.  In the Disney Discussion for Pinocchio, I commented on that tale's episodic nature, but it's nothing compared to Alice in Wonderland which moves incredibly rapidly from Alice's meetings with one character to the next only to essentially never hear or see these characters again for the remainder of the film.  As a matter of fact, Alice in Wonderland almost feels like Disney's reverting back to the "package films" of the war era.  

Admittedly, I truly adored the animation here with each character given his or her own unique animated style and mannerism.  Top notch vocal talent elevates every scene as well and, thus far, I think Alice in Wonderland is the best showcase for how the right voices can improve scenes, characters, and even an entire movie.  Honestly, it's in the animation and vocals where Alice in Wonderland excels and on Blu-Ray the colors pop beautifully off the screen.

Unfortunately, the story just doesn't work for me and for that reason Alice in Wonderland doesn't quite land in my version of the revered pantheon of Disney films.  That said, I wouldn't put up a fight if anyone felt it belonged there -- it has its merits, but they're not quite enough to tip it over the edge for me.

The RyMickey Rating: C+

I'm going to take a little breather next week with the Thanksgiving holiday.  I've also got a bunch of current movie reviews to catch up on.  So, join me two Wednesdays from now for Peter Pan, the fourteenth film in The Disney Discussion.