Alice in Wonderland Review: Disney Marathon

Spoilers

Alice in Wonderland is based on two books, ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ and ‘Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There’ both written by Lewis Carroll who was most likely a paedophile. Turns out a lot of the authors of children’s books were, J. M. Barrie who wrote Peter Pan was also probably one. In fact, Alice from Alice in Wonderland was potentially based on Alice Liddel who was a young girl that Lewis Carroll hung out with at the time. Yikes. The idea of death of the author is something I find almost essential to enjoying earlier books. If you don’t know, death of the author is the idea that you should disassociate the author with the work they created, the piece should be viewed on its own, ignoring the context in which it was made. Yeah, H. P. Lovecraft was racist, J. R. R. Tolkien was sexist, and it turns out J. K. Rowling is transphobic but you can ignore them and enjoy the work on its own. It’s probably a good idea to follow this idea if you want to enjoy a lot of pieces of media. Wow, that was a long and random tangent. Maybe I’m delaying explaining the plot because it’s going to be hard to do so. The whole film is like an acid trip but I guess it was me who said I needed to review one of these a day, so let’s get on with it.

The credits play to the song ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and the weirdest thing about this song is how it paints Wonderland as a nice place which is the complete opposite of how its presented in the movie.

Alice is sitting with her teacher or someone (I don’t know who she is) reading when she exclaims how bored she is (these dumbass kids, she probably wants to go on her phone). She sings of her fantasies of a weird and wacky work in the song ‘In a World of My Own’ and it’s a good enough song. It establishes what Alice wants. Soon after this Alice just wonders off without informing her teacher or whoever they are. She notices a rabbit running off talking about how late he is. He sings the song ‘I’m Late’ which my Mum who was watching this one with me started singing so I guess it’s iconic at least. If I saw a talking rabbit, I’d personally head in the other direction but that’s just me. Anyway, Alice falls down a hole and has the most nonchalant reaction to falling ever. She sits on a falling chair at one point, she drinks some tea at one point, personally I’d panic a little more. Alice finally reaches the bottom and follows the rabbit into a large room with a small talking door. The door tells Alice that she needs to shrink down to fit inside him (careful now Mr. door you don’t want to end up like the author of the original novel, do you?). Apparently, she needs to drink a magic drink to shrink down to the size of the door. She does this then he tells her that he’s locked and the key is on the table that she is now too small to reach. She eats a cake that makes her big, she grabs the key but is now too tall to go in the door (you see why I didn’t want to summarise this plot now?). She cries a bit before shrinking by drinking the drink and shrinking to the size of the keyhole and just goes through that instead of opening the door (I guess that’s one way to do it). Now if you’ve read my previous reviews, you’d probably think I’d hate this. I’ve complained about how much early Disney films like to fill up their time with pointless nonsense. But nah, I like this. Those films are trying to tell a story, so taking you away from it to show you pointless bullshit ruins the pacing. Alice in Wonderland is trying to do many things but the one thing it isn’t trying to do is tell a cohesive story. The fun of watching Alice in Wonderland is wondering what weird shit we’re going to see next. When everything’s pointless bullshit, nothings pointless bullshit.

When I said Alice cried a bit earlier, what I meant to say was she cried so much she created an ocean. This ocean is where we end up now. She eventually ends up on the shore where some animals are running around in a circle to get dry. They are singing the song ‘The Caucus Race’ which sure is technically a song I guess (I’ll put more effort into these song reviews when Disney puts more effort into the songs).

Alice runs into a forest and meets Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. Now I think now is the time to admit that I hadn’t seen Alice in Wonderland until this point. I had seen the remake and the remakes sequel but not the original. Because of this a lot of the film was me pointing at the screen and saying that I recognise a character, whilst waiting for other iconic characters to appear. Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum are one of the more iconic characters from Alice in Wonderland so I was pretty surprised when they didn’t do much. They just tell a story about some guy murdering a ton of babies (not gonna go into any more detail as it’s funny imagining people who haven’t watched the film wondering what the fuck I’m talking about). Whilst telling this story they sing the song ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter’ which just serves as a narration of what is happening in the story. After the story they sing another song called ‘Old Father William’ which I forgot was in the movie. After this we never see them again. Bye, I guess.

Alice sneaks away because she’s just as underwhelmed by them as I was before ending up at the white rabbit’s house. Alice tries to ask him what he’s late for but he mistakes her for his maid and demands that she goes and fetches his gloves. Alice the dumb bitch decides to steal one of his cookies and grows to the size of the house. Don’t know why the rabbit owns those cookies but I guess there’s no point trying to make sense of a story which is meant to make no sense. A local dodo thinks that Alice is a monster and wants to get rid of her so sends up a chimney sweep to try and get her out, she sneezes he flies away and we never hear from him again. I found that pretty funny. The dodo tries to burn the house down. Whilst trying to set the house on fire the Dodo sings the song ‘Smoke the Blighter Out’ which is quite catchy. Alice eats a carrot which causes her to shrink down to the size of an insect. The dodo sets the house on fire anyway which is pretty funny whilst Alice runs off to meet some flowers.

The flowers sing a song called ‘All in the Golden Afternoon’ (I forgot how much songs were in this film) and it’s got a lot of charm to it, it has a lot of puns in it which I hate that I found kinda funny. After they find out Alice isn’t a flower, they kick her out of their neighbourhood (damn racist flowers).

Alice meets a smoking caterpillar and they just start reciting poems and saying letters, but some advice that he gives her does actually help her. Eating this certain mushroom will change her size depending on what side of it she eats. She eats a bit and grows to the size of a giant. She then eats another bit which makes her insect size again before licking the mushroom and turning normal size once again. She now has mastered the ability of growth manipulation. With some mushrooms in her pockets she’s ready to take on the world.

She now meets the Cheshire Cat who it turns out is played by Sterling Holloway, I didn’t even realise this, looks like he can do voices that aren’t just Winnie the Pooh. He sings the song ‘’Twas Brillig’ and I’m just gonna say I’ll be impressed if anyone remembers the lyrics to this, even though its only about half-a-minute long.

The Chesire Cat speaks some vague bullshit and Alice ends up having tea with the Mad Hatter and March Hare. This scene is a lot of fun, The Mad Hatter keeps offering Alice tea but due to how batshit crazy he is she doesn’t actually get any. Anyway, they sing the song ‘The Un’birthday Song’ and fucking hell they really wanted to fill up this soundtrack didn’t they. Alice gets pissed off and runs off because of how weird everyone is. After seeing some more surreal shit Alice ends up upset, she learns that a world with no rules is not good. She sings the song ‘Very Good Advice’ which is a pleasant song for the low point of the movie. The Cheshire Cat tells her that the Queen of Hearts could help her, so with his help she finds her.

The Queen of Hearts and her simp husband are pretty great characters, the Queen is a spoiled woman with no concern for human life, almost fetishising the idea of decapitation. Her husband the King however just quietly tries to calm her down whilst politely asking that people actually acknowledge him as royalty.

Alice helps the queen’s guards who look like playing cards paint some white roses red so they don’t get beheaded. The song they sing during this section ‘Painting the Roses Red’ is luckily the last song in the movie. The soundtrack was underwhelming if I’m honest. Alice ends up playing croquet with the Queen. The Queen ends up cheating with help from her men who are too afraid to let her lose. The Cheshire Cat ends up pranking the queen which leads to her ordering that Alice gets beheaded. Her simp-ass husband ends up asking for a proper trial first though.

The court room scene is entertaining enough, Alice grows big at one point and insults the queen but for some reason now the growth powers have a time limit so she shrinks again just to be chased by the Queen and her guards throughout Wonderland. It turns out it was all a dream as Alice wakes up and learns to never criticise reality again.

What I find most fascinating about Alice in Wonderland is its message in comparison to the message of the remake. Don’t get me wrong I don’t really like the remake but I think this is worth bringing up. The message of Alice in Wonderland seems to be to behave, that there’s an order to the world for a reason. Alice goes to her crazy world of Wonderland and is treated to nothing but despair and is happy to wake up to the normal world. The remake has the message that being a bit weird is good, that being like everyone else is a bad thing. It fascinates me that the viewpoint on being weird has changed since 1951 to the point where the remake / sequel has the completely opposite message than its predecessor.

Anyway, Alice in Wonderland is a good enough time, you’re not going to get more than some trippy visuals but sometimes that’s all you need. Next up, Peter Pan.

6 / 10