Walt Disney's Alice In Wonderland is new to Blu-ray and this film, which was already well known for it's amazing technicolor animation, simply pops off the TV screen in high definition.
The Disney studio has been slowly releasing their classic animated films to high-def Blu-ray. So far they have issued Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Sleeping Beauty, Pinocchio, Beauty and the Beast, Fantasia and The Princess and the Frog, and on March 1st Bambi will join the group. Each of these films, along with Alice In Wonderland, have been meticulously transferred so that watching them is almost like a brand new experience in sight and sound. If you are a true movie buff it is worth getting a Blu-ray player and high-def TV just to experience these classic films. Regrettably Disney has abandoned the practice of releasing these films to theatres before their release on home video.
Alice In Wonderland has never been my favorite Disney film. I have only seen it three times; once in a theatre when I was young, once on TV when it was first released to VHS and this showing on Blu-ray. The film suffers from having no real story arc. Alice enters wonderland and has a series of meandering adventures and encounters with odd characters, but it never really goes anywhere. The film had five directors, each directing a sequence in the film, and I think the film suffers because each of them worked to make their section the biggest and most noticeable, so the film has no momentum and does not build from segment to segment.
Walt Disney never really intended the film to be similar to his previous successful films, Snow White, Pinocchio and Bambi. Instead, he viewed Alice In Wonderland the same way he viewed Fantasia, a film that featured images and music as entertainment, not a central story line. When watched from that point of view, the movie can be quite engaging.
Alice In Wonderland was one of Walt Disney studio's least successful animated film. Released in 1951, it received mixed reviews and was especially disliked in England. After it's initial release it was withdrawn and featured on the Disney TV show. It did not go back into re-release every few years the way other Disney animated films did. It was not until the late sixties, when the film was discovered by "stoners" who enjoyed the technicolor head trip, that the film found a new audience, especially in college towns. Other films that enjoyed this type of "head trip" popularity were Disney's Fantasia and 2001: A Space Odyssey.
The studio initially resisted the association with the counter-culture, but seeing a lucrative market, they gave the film a new release in 1974, featuring a psychedelic ad campaign (notice the large mushroom).
I appreciate Alice in Wonderland for it's artistic achievement and some of the iconic Lewis Carroll character's it brought to life, but the Alice in Wonderland series has never been a favorite of mine, and this film fails to touch me on an emotional level. It's worth seeing for the stunning creative animation and music, but it does not measure up to the best of Disney's four star animated classics.
At The Movie House rating *** stars
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