Alice in Wonderland (TV 1999)

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.

Director:

Nick Willing

Writers:

Lewis Carroll (novel), Peter Barnes (teleplay)

Stars:

Robbie Coltrane, Whoopi Goldberg, Ben Kingsley

Won 4 Primetime Emmys. Another 2 wins & 6 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
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 Cedric of Hearts / Society Man

Storyline

Alice follows a white rabbit down a rabbit-hole into a whimsical Wonderland, where she meets characters like the delightful Cheshire Cat, the clumsy White Knight, a rude caterpillar, and the hot-tempered Queen of Hearts and can grow ten feet tall or shrink to three inches. But will she ever be able to return home?

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Plot Keywords:

rabbit | cheshire cat | white rabbit | cat | cards | 

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Taglines:

A Masterpiece of Imagination. . .

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Genres:

Adventure | Comedy | Family | Fantasy

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Certificate:

PG

Details

Country:

UK USA Germany

Language:

English

Release Date:

28 February 1999 (USA)

Also Known As:

Alice au pays des merveilles

Filming Locations:

Burnham Beeches, Buckinghamshire, England, UK

Box Office

Budget:

$21,000,000 (estimated)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Babelsberg International Film Produktion, Hallmark Entertainment, NBC Studios

Technical Specs

Runtime:

150 min 65 min (2 episodes) 129 min (VHS) 131 min (TV) (2 parts)

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Martin Short's head was digitally enlarged to three times its normal size, so to better replicate the Mad Hatter in Sir John Tenniel's illustrations.

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Goofs

When the Queen of Hearts decides to decapitate the cards who were painting the roses red, Alice hides them in her skirt to save them. However, they are never seen getting out, and no further reference is made to them in the film.

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Quotes

Mad Hatter: [looking at his watch] What day of the month is it?
Alice: The fourth.
Mad Hatter: AHA! Two days wrong!
[glares at the March Hare]
Mad Hatter: I told you not to use butter!
March Hare: It was the best butter...
The Dormouse: Danish, mmm...
Mad Hatter: Yes, but some crumbs must have got in as well. I said, don't put butter in the works with a breadknife...!
March Hare: I couldn't put it in with a fork, could I? Here, let me see...
Mad Hatter: I wouldn't think of it... but I will.
[...]

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Connections

Version of Alice (2009)

User Reviews

Decent TV Version

I love the two Alice books and quite often I find myself looking through the pages, reading some of my favorite parts.

I think for a TV_version, this film works quite well, it is a treat to watch all those celebrities becoming some of the most famous characters in literature. Strangely though, my favorite sequence is the one with Peter Ustinov and Pete Postlethwaite as the Walrus and the Carpenter, probably the only scene in the movie that does not contain CGI.

So, why only six stars? As in most versions, the makers of the movie have mixed all kinds of elements from "Alice in Wonderland" with "Through the looking glass" (Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum, The Walrus and the Carpenter, The White Knight). It may work, if you really look at the books just as a collection of episodes, but whenever this is done, the makers miss the point of the books. Alice in "Through the looking glass" is quite different from Alice in "Alice in wonderland" and also, there is a completely different composition to the latter book which is explained in the preface and which finds no acknowledgment whatsoever here. I think the makers of this movie again don't understand the books at all and though I enjoy watching these scenes independently from each other, the whole leaves me unsatisfied.

I have gotten used to mixing the Alice stories, Walt Disney has done the same thing and others as well. But what bothers me most about this film it that it turns the whole thing into a story of initiation. Come on.... Alice does not dare to perform a song in front of her parent's guest but after walking through Wonderland she finally does? This is just plain wrong and completely in contrast to the meaning of the books. Why would you want do make sense out of nonsense? The books are meant to portray Victorian stereotypes, make fun of language etc, but not to enrich a child to become more independent and self-assured. Moreover, it does not make sense at all, why Alice should finally be able to sing in front of the others.

All in all, this movie has fine performances and puppets and decent (considering the time it was made and it being made for TV) CGI, is nice to look at but in the end only mediocre TV-entertainment.