- Title: Alice in Wonderland (1951)
- IMDb: link
Disney’s 1951 adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s novel is a fever dream dropping young Alice (Kathryn Beaumont) down the rabbit hole into a nonsensical world which is both everything she ever wanted and far more than she bargained for. The film follows Alice through a series of odd, mostly disconnected, and admittedly beautifully rendered, adventures coming across the likes of the Mad Hatter (Ed Wynn), the Cheshire Cat (Sterling Holloway), the Queen of Hearts (Verna Felton), and others, while following the White Rabbit (Bill Thompson).
The film had a troubled history just making it to the big screen where it met with some resistance (particularly from Carroll fans). Initially considered both a box office and critical failure, Alice found its audience on various re-releases and home video over the years.
Alice was never a staple for me growing up, and although I can appreciate the work that went into the film (and some of its standout moments and vibrant characters) it’s always been, to me, less than the sum of its parts and one of the weaker Disney classics. I don’t know if I have ever managed to watch it all the way through in a single sitting.
If a film can be both underappreciated and overly praised that pretty well describes the history of Alice and Wonderland. The new 4K restoration certainly captures the movie’s bright visuals with the normal helping of classic Disney extras coming from previously-released featurettes on the Blu-ray disc.
