Alice In Wonderland [DVD]

Product Information

The movie starts off as several of the Wonderland film adaptations do; with a 'Wizard of Oz' style opening whereby characters from Alice's real life world become the characters of her Wonderland dream. The story actually keeps time to a theme set up in this opening where we have Alice suffering from stage fright. Her journey through Wonderland endows her with the self-confidence needed to not only pull off her real life performance, but to act on her intuition as well. This of course is an added layer of story telling not part of the book. Although purists [rightfully] object to this addition, I didn't find it all that distracting. R1 60th Anniversary Edition America- Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment - No cuts (75:12 NTSC).

What else? A nice bonus with this edition of AIW is the inclusion of the puppy sequence. This is the first Alice I've seen where they reproduced the puppy that Alice runs into upon shrinking herself and escaping from the rabbit's house. Another first is the rendering of the table in the Hall of Doors as 100% glass, as described in the book. R2 Special Collection zum 60. Jubiläum Germany- Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment - No cuts (72:11 PAL). As a terrified Alice dashes out of the hovel with the baby in an attempt to rescue it to prevent the baby from further harm, the baby transforms into a pig and Alice then meets the wise old Cheshire Cat (beautifully portrayed by Whoopie Goldberg) who enquires: ‘What happened to the baby?’ Alice informs the cat that ‘the baby turned into a pig’ and the cat replies ‘I THOUGHT it might’ – informing us that the baby grew up to be a pig because of NEGLECFUL NURTURING. Start-up trailers for "Disney Blu-ray", "Beauty and the Beast: Diamond Edition", "Tangled" and "Anti-Smoking" PSA

R4 60th Anniversary Edition Australia- Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment - No cuts (72:11 PAL) Be warned! Once you watch the film you will find the contents to be curiouser and curiouser – and you will be tempted to watch it again and again. And so the film goes on – accurately depicting each and every lesson that Lewis Carroll has masterfully hidden in his masterwork for the astute child (adult?) to see and learn from for themselves. The start where you see Alice is nervous to sing in front of all the party guests and her mother is guilting her into it. ( That was just mean). She ends up falling into the rabbit hole and along the way she learns to stand up for herself and have a voice. Which in the end comes into play in every way. I know when I was a kid and growing up and I came across this it was very much an important film in my life. I just loved everything about it. The darkness and intrigue and the mystery of Wonderland.

On the way Alice enters the Gentleman’s club where she encounters the mad hatter seriously bullying the dormouse, and the March hare always siding with hatter – where in their cruel attempt to be rid of Alice because women are not welcome by asking her riddles that do not have an answer to make Alice feel foolish (Why is a raven like a writing desk?), Alice learns about how people can twist things around to bring things to their own advantage. The film has a stellar cast (including Ken Dodd) who unfold the curious adventure and deliver messages hidden in plain sight in a fabulously delightful way that makes the film compelling viewing over and over again – always supplemented with LOTS of discussions with children and adults – both during and afterwards - on what is REALLY taking place and what lessons are to be learned from Alice’s adventure in ‘Wonderland’. There isn’t a better version of this wonderful story - a story filled with all of the many lessons of life we wish we could have learnt when we were young.

Customer reviews

Alice stumbles into the world of Wonderland. Will she get home? Not if the Queen of Hearts has here way.