Alice in Wonderland (1999) (TV)

Director:

Nick Willing

Writers (WGA):

Lewis Carroll (novel)
Peter Barnes (teleplay)

Release Date:

28 February 1999 (USA)

Genre:

Family | Adventure | Fantasy

Tagline:

A Masterpiece of Imagination. . .

Plot:

The wizards behind "Merlin" and "The Odyssey" combine Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass" into a three-hour special that just gets curiouser and curiouser.

Plot Keywords:

Rabbit | White Rabbit | Mad Hatter | Stage Fright | Pool Of Tears

Awards:

Won 4 Primetime Emmys. Another 1 win & 6 nominations

Cast

Robbie Coltrane	...	Ned Tweedledum
Whoopi Goldberg	...	Cheshire Cat
Ben Kingsley	...	Major Caterpillar
Christopher Lloyd	...	White Knight
Pete Postlethwaite	...	Carpenter
Miranda Richardson	...	Queen of Hearts / Society Woman
Martin Short	...	Mad Hatter / Chinless Idiot
Peter Ustinov	...	Walrus
George Wendt	...	Fred Tweedledee
Gene Wilder	...	Mock Turtle
Tina Majorino	...	Alice
Ken Dodd	...	Mr. Mouse
Jason Flemyng	...	Sir Jack, the Knave of Hearts / Cad
Sheila Hancock	...	Cook
Simon Russell Beale	...	King of Hearts / Society Man

Also Known As:

Alice im Wunderland (Germany)

Runtime:

USA:150 min | 65 min (2 episodes) | USA:129 min (VHS version) | Finland:131 min (TV) (2 parts)

Country:

UK | USA | Germany

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Certification:

Singapore:PG | Australia:G | USA:Not Rated (DVD) | UK:U | USA:PG

Filming Locations:

Burnham Beeches, Buckinghamshire, England, UK

Company:

Babelsberg International Film Produktion

Trivia:

The Mock Turtle is portrayed as a real turtle in this series. However, in the "Alice in Wonderland" novel, the Mock Turtle had a turtle shell, but with limbs from different livestock. This was because mock turtle soup (for those who couldn't afford to have real turtle soup) is made from an assortment of different animals (poultry, beef, etc). This complex joke was erased, or more likely omitted, from the story.

Goofs:

Continuity: At the end of the movie when Alice is singing, in between shots her hair changes from being behind her shoulders on both sides to being in front on one side.

Quotes:

[some talking daisies insult Alice]
Alice: If you're not quiet, I'll make you into a chain!
[the daisies shut up]

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Phoebe in Wonderland (2008)

Visionary

Lewis Carroll is a difficult author to adapt satisfactorily to the screen. Worse yet, most versions try to add some sort of lesson to the story that was never there to begin with. This, too uses a version that simply doesn't work. Alice does not want to have to sing "Cheery Ripe" so the whole film becomes about the importance of performing for an audience. That fails to really hold the film together. Despite this, this is probably the best-looking version of the two books yet. It does neither what the Children's Theatre Company did in 1982, and try to exactly mimic Tenniel's illustrations, nor that of the Harry Harris production, in which the actors had to be recognizable so they wore simple costumes with pig ears or rabbit ears, etc. Here there is a mix of puppetry and mere suggestion. Many of the minor anthropomorphics simply bear resemblance to whatever animal they were supposed to be, such as there was the use (again) of an all-star cast. It frequently makes fun of the fact that many of the cast do not speak in an English accent, though the American actor playing Alice does. The film, however, has beautiful cinematography and visionary effects. The early sequence in the library seems like the Halmis are trying to out-Gulliver their adaptation of Book III of Gullvier's Travels. The extreme visuals begine with the giant metronome at the beginning and carry all sorts of wonderful metaphor. Odd jump cuts and strange reflections don't look like goofs, but contribute to weirdness. A storm like _The Neverending Story_'s Nothing forces her to move on in her dream world to escape. The sped-up photography for the White Rabbit seems a nod to _El Gatto con Botas_, and of course, it's tied together like MGM's version of _The Wizard of Oz_. Like all films of these books, it has good elements and poorly handled elements, and certainly there is no definitive version, but this is one of the more interesting ones.