Alice in Wonderland (1951) Review:

After the success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and many other animated films to come after it, there came a time when Walt Disney would adapt a famous story in his vision that would involve a much different tale. That story is Alice in Wonderland,...unfortunately, it may create some mixed results for various viewers. For the most part, this is based on the original story to begin with. If you don't like the original, you probably won't enjoy this either. I was on the fence for this even though I do support it more than I didn't enjoy it. But it still lacked a lot of what many people would consider a Disney classic.

Alice & the Mad Hatter & Rabbit

The story begins in the real world where Alice, a little girl is being a taught a history lesson from an adult. But Alice has other plans, she's too much into fooling around like a kid and not having to care about education and other important skills. She becomes bored and follows a rabbit yelling that he's late and thus begins her trippy adventure into the world of wonderland. I think the term really should be called crazyland or nonsenseland because that's really what is the description of this place. There's nothing to gaze on in wonder about. The pace at which these inhabitants live is remarkably fast. Almost like they're all on a sugar rush. A lot of them are also very rude which is a bit strange for Disney.

It doesn't last forever but the pace is very quick for about half the film and it can get extremely annoying to watch. It won't help that the main character, Alice, becomes fed up with everything around her as well. It's good character development but for me, if the main lead is frustrated, then so am I. If the lead is tired of its surroundings I will be too. This is mostly because the first half of the movie was all random occurrences. There didn't feel like much of a plot to begin with and by the end, my opinion had not changed.

The point at which where viewers might change from annoyed to appreciating the cleverness of Disney's adaptation, is when Alice runs into the garden bed full of flowers. It'll be cool to see how Disney and Co. smartly marry the names of flowers and adjectives together. From there, viewers will finally be able to enjoy the zaniness that is the more popular characters like the Mad Hatter and the Cheshire Cat. Thankfully for them, they are given more charm than most of the other characters. But again, they're all a little too cooky to be liked all the time because even they become nuisances at some point.

"Painting the Roses Red"

However, if there's something to give credit for, it's the animation and music - score wise. The soundtrack that has the musical numbers,...ehh they were alright but there were only a few that were catchy like "Painting the roses red" or "The unbirthday song". The animation though is as great as all the others are. The imaginative drawings and character design are extremely unique. Oliver Wallace, a composer for many other Disney films like Peter Pan (1953) and Lady and the Tramp (1955) did a good job at the score as well. Besides this, if there's one useful lesson learned from this movie, it’s that being crazy can be funny but too much nonsense can dilute the experience.

This is probably the most divergent of all Disney oldies. The animation and musical score are appreciated but the plot is seriously lacking along with very few likable characters with the rest being fairly rude. Even the few likable characters can get tiresome.

Points Earned --> 6:10