Here's another TV adaptation of Lewis Carroll's brilliant Alice books into mind-numbing tripe. The two-parter covers most of the episodes from both "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and its sequel "Through the Looking-Glass" in that Alice meets a bunch of strange characters, but it mostly extripates Carroll's words in favor of bland songs and uncomplicated dancing and replaces the books' clever nonsense made of logic and against simplistic morality tales with a trite and cloying moral ripped off from Disney about a whining kid overcoming fear so as to "grow up" and go home to mommy for tea time. Alice is actually played by a child this time, but while the actress is game, she's a very modern and cutesy American kid as opposed to an English one from the Victorian era and for whom, had this TV production kept Carroll's words, all the books' humor regarding a rigid upbringing would be relevant. Indeed, most of the cast is occupied by Americans and, worse than that, many of them TV personalities. So, for instance, you get Kojak, as the most miserable Cheshire Cat I've ever seen, spouting, "Meow, baby." Inserting a stupid TV-show catchphrase into a picture that has largely removed the intelligent wordplay of the books is reason enough to hate this "Alice in Wonderland." You know, across the pond, they made cheap and TV versions of the Alice books, too, but they also attracted talented actors like Peter Sellers for them. And this isn't even the best Alice movie I've seen to feature Ringo Starr (see "Yellow Submarine" (1968)) or, for that matter, Sammy Davis Jr. (yeah, even the Hanna-Barbera "Alice in Wonderland" (1966) is better than this).
The best part is the beginning of the mad tea party, where some of what Carroll wrote is retained and what's added is in the spirit of the text--that is before the Hatter breaks into saccharine song. Most of the rest is putrid detritus vomited atop the grave of Charles Dodgson. Besides the addition of an integrated musical, there's an episode between Alice and a fawn after the tea party, which serves for more of Alice's crying for mommy and an irrelevant love song regarding the Golden Rule. Other annoying animals needlessly added include an owl who guides Alice on the moral of the story and a kid goat and chimp for more of Alice's crying for mommy. Meanwhile, the picture misses opportunities to make visual mise-en-abymes out of the books' nested poems: namely, "You Are Old, Father William" and "The Walrus and the Carpenter," while also employing "Jabberwocky" as an awkward transitional device that terrorizes Looking-Glass World (and "Jabberwocky" is the name of the poem--not the Jabberwock, but, whatever, that's a common misnomer). Even the 1933 Paramount production, for example, was wise enough to insert "The Walrus and the Carpenter" as an animated film-within-the-film.
Another small but telling example of how inept the filmmakers were regarding the source text and how to visually adapt it is their missing the opportunity for doubling with the characters of Haigha and Hatta, the White King's "Anglo-Saxon messengers," the names of which the filmmakers apparently didn't understand was a bit of wordplay for the March Hare and the Hatter. The second part even incongruously brings back these two characters later, along with the White Rabbit, for the added Jabberwocky and goodbye-waving junk. What incompetence! I suppose, at least, they didn't conflate the Queen of Hearts and the Red Queen (Disney) or Wonderland and Looking-Glass World (Disney again). And the dated special visual effects aren't as hideous as in Nick Willing's two Alice movies, or Tim Burton's ones, for that matter. It's not as though I consider fidelity vital in adaptation, either; to the contrary, my favorite Alice films tend to be loose reworkings and pictures that merely reference the books in clever ways for an otherwise unrelated scenario. Jan Svankmajer's surrealist "Alice" (1988) and prior short recitation of "Jabberwocky" (1971) or that Beatles film, for examples, rank highly on my Alice lists. It helps, however, whether or not one plans to be faithful to the text, that they read and comprehend the source. Instead, we get generations raised on this sterile idiot-box illiteracy.
P.S. I wonder if it's because the Drug War was raging at the time that this Alice just says no to consuming any mushrooms for her growing bigger and smaller, or if it was merely general TV cowardice and incompetence.
The best part is the beginning of the mad tea party, where some of what Carroll wrote is retained and what's added is in the spirit of the text--that is before the Hatter breaks into saccharine song. Most of the rest is putrid detritus vomited atop the grave of Charles Dodgson. Besides the addition of an integrated musical, there's an episode between Alice and a fawn after the tea party, which serves for more of Alice's crying for mommy and an irrelevant love song regarding the Golden Rule. Other annoying animals needlessly added include an owl who guides Alice on the moral of the story and a kid goat and chimp for more of Alice's crying for mommy. Meanwhile, the picture misses opportunities to make visual mise-en-abymes out of the books' nested poems: namely, "You Are Old, Father William" and "The Walrus and the Carpenter," while also employing "Jabberwocky" as an awkward transitional device that terrorizes Looking-Glass World (and "Jabberwocky" is the name of the poem--not the Jabberwock, but, whatever, that's a common misnomer). Even the 1933 Paramount production, for example, was wise enough to insert "The Walrus and the Carpenter" as an animated film-within-the-film.
Another small but telling example of how inept the filmmakers were regarding the source text and how to visually adapt it is their missing the opportunity for doubling with the characters of Haigha and Hatta, the White King's "Anglo-Saxon messengers," the names of which the filmmakers apparently didn't understand was a bit of wordplay for the March Hare and the Hatter. The second part even incongruously brings back these two characters later, along with the White Rabbit, for the added Jabberwocky and goodbye-waving junk. What incompetence! I suppose, at least, they didn't conflate the Queen of Hearts and the Red Queen (Disney) or Wonderland and Looking-Glass World (Disney again). And the dated special visual effects aren't as hideous as in Nick Willing's two Alice movies, or Tim Burton's ones, for that matter. It's not as though I consider fidelity vital in adaptation, either; to the contrary, my favorite Alice films tend to be loose reworkings and pictures that merely reference the books in clever ways for an otherwise unrelated scenario. Jan Svankmajer's surrealist "Alice" (1988) and prior short recitation of "Jabberwocky" (1971) or that Beatles film, for examples, rank highly on my Alice lists. It helps, however, whether or not one plans to be faithful to the text, that they read and comprehend the source. Instead, we get generations raised on this sterile idiot-box illiteracy.
P.S. I wonder if it's because the Drug War was raging at the time that this Alice just says no to consuming any mushrooms for her growing bigger and smaller, or if it was merely general TV cowardice and incompetence.