Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1972)

The Worst Film Ever

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Great Film overall

As Good As It Gets

Sometimes a movie's triumphs work against it. The triumph in this remake of "Alice in Wonderland" is its magical opening sequence, where we see Victorian haughtiness and manners, the wonders of the imagination, and perhaps even the suggestion of Dodgson's repressed sexual interest in the young Alice Liddel all manifest themselves in less than ten minutes. The expectation created in these wonderfully crafted scenes, aided by John Barry's music score, is that we shall see something truly magical once Alice arrives in Wonderland. Then after arriving in Wonderland, we soon realize that every scene is going to be pretty much like the last one: a bunch of actors dressed up in costumes and singing forgettable songs. The bright colours, the sense of wonder and magic, and witty dialogue -- which existed in the memorable, albeit flawed, Disney version -- have been completely drained from this picture. This film does little for the imagination and fails even more miserably as entertainment.

This is the fourth film version I’ve watched of Lewis Carroll’s classic – the 1903 Silent, the 1951 Walt Disney animated version, and the 1966 British TV adaptation; there are at least three more adaptations I’m interested in – Paramount’s 1933 all-star feature, the 1949 Franco-British version mixing live-action with puppet figures, and Jan Svankmajer’s 1988 film. This musicalized version was made in a time when setting literary classics (everything from Miguel Cervantes to George Bernard Shaw, Charles Dickens to James Hilton) to music was quite fashionable. Still, despite the engagement of a tremendous cast – Michael Jayston, Hywel Bennett, Michael Crawford, Ralph Richardson, Peter Bull, Roy Kinnear, Robert Helpmann, Peter Sellers, Dudley Moore, Dennis Price, Flora Robson, Spike Milligan, Michael Hordern – they are mostly ineffective and even unrecognizable under all the heavy make-up! Alice herself – Fiona Fullerton – isn’t very sympathetic either.The highlight is perhaps the tea party sequence with Helpmann (as The Mad Hatter), Sellers (as The March Hare) and Moore (as The Dormouse) – after which the slow-moving film starts slipping into boredom. The music by John Barry and lyrics by Don Black are decent at best, but distinctly unmemorable. Writer-director William Sterling’s adaptation – whose only film in that capacity this was – is disappointingly uninspired, then, turning Carroll’s surrealistic original into a dullish kiddie film! Apart from the opportunity of star-spotting, the film’s main virtues, therefore, are Geoffrey Unsworth’s cinematography and Anthony Mendelsohn’s colorful costume designs – qualities which were also recognized by the BAFTA. Admittedly, I rewatched this via a budget DVD release of a public domain, panned-and-scanned and extremely hazy print – which certainly didn’t aid my appreciation of it in any way!

A first look at this "Alice in Wonderland" on the small screen makes one think, "Oh, the humanity!" as many of Britain's finest thespians and comics get lost in animal suits. With this big film formatted for television, one loses two-thirds of the movie's gorgeous look; interrupted by commercials, it loses its narrative flow.Viewed in wide-screen (and it's very wide-screen), one sees striking art direction and set design. There is also a sensible flow from one scene to the next (all based on Carroll) that is lost on most television broadcasts because of commercial interruptions.The acting is often delicious. Peter Sellers' demented March hare provokes laughs, as does comic Spike Milligan -- utterly hidden in his Gryphon costume but using one of his best "Goon Show" voices to good effect and stealing scenes with just his eyebrows. Peter Bull is the image of the Duchess.Some of the costumes are tacky. Ralph Richardson, one of England's premier actors, is too obviously a poor man relegated to a caterpillar outfit. Michael Hordern makes his Mock Turtle even more bizarre than Carroll made him (contrast Hordern's M.T. to John Gielgud's wistfully melancholy mock turtle in the '66 Jonathan Miller "Alice"). Dudley Moore delivers his lines well, but his Dormouse suit seems to have come off the rack. Young singer/light comedian, later Phantom of the Opera, Michael Crawford, is unrecognizable as the White Rabbit.Other performances range from the excellent to the adequate. Robert Helpman, who terrified more than one generation of children as the child catcher in "Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang" doesn't come off so effectively as the Mad Hatter (it's too bad Milligan didn't get that part opposite Sellers' wonderfully insane March Hare, and maybe Harry Secombe as the Dormouse for an all-Goon tea party). Frank and Fred Cox are an amusing Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Flora Robson is a fine "Queen of Hearts". And Fiona Fullerton is a radiant and beautiful teen-aged Alice.Then there is the music. The songs are mostly taken from Carroll's text (with a few regrettable exceptions). They actually get better as the show goes along (as with the Lobster Quadrill and the White Rabbit's letter-song) and they're best when they stick to Carroll. Apart from the better songs, the music isn't inspiring. John Barry, who composed some of the best music for the movies ever, drops the ball with mostly sappy and unmemorable music that drags the movie down.What ultimately keeps the movie from being as good as the sum of its parts is that, like Carroll's story, there's just too much Wonderland to go around; and by the time we reach the Gryphon and the Mock Turtle, good though they are in the book and as much life as Milligan and Hordern try to inject into their roles, we're saturated and ready for the story to wrap up.The letter-boxing makes the movie awfully narrow for many televisions, yet tapes and DVDs formatted for the TV screen simply can't do the feature justice.

I liked this movie very much. So many good English actors are in it like Dudley Moore as the Dormouse, Michael Crawford as the white rabbit, Robert Helpmann as the Mad Hatter, Ralph Richardson as the caterpillar, Peter Sellers as the March Hare. Fiona Fullerton is charming as Alice. I don't remember seeing her in adult roles as she got older. But in Alice, she is very good. This version is close to the original story of Alice in Wonderland. I bought this movie on video a few years ago and the quality of the tape is one of the worst I've ever seen on video - just dreadful by Platinum Entertainment. Its blurry and faded colors. A waste of a perfectly good movie with such cheap poor quality tape. I put up with it just because I like the movie so much. I am hoping that very soon a major movie studio will bring out a good quality DVD version of this movie which is long overdue. Extras about making the movie, and interviews with any of the remaining actors in the movie would be nice, but I can only think of Fiona Fullerton and Michael Crawford who are still around, though there may be others. Jan.13/06 - I forgot to add an update to my original comments till now. I was surprised to find a DVD version of this movie was re-released in Dec.2004. I bought it early in 2005 from Amazon.com for $8.99. Its still available so if you want it, you know where to get it. Its much superior to the awful video version I had of it which I threw out when I got the DVD.Another update as of March, 2008. There are several versions of this movie on DVD now released. I bought 2 DVD's of the movie but different studios, but the DVD I found had the best quality was made by Universal Studios in Dec. 28,2004. On the DVD cover it has a picture of Fiona Fullerton sitting on a chair. Its for sale new atAmazon.com for $9.99. No, I don't work for Amazon.