Alice in Wonderland (1999)

Alice (Tina Majorino) falls down a rabbit hole, and finds herself in Wonderland, a fantasy land of strange characters and ideas.

Director:

Nick Willing

Writers:

Lewis Carroll (novel), Peter Barnes (teleplay)

Stars:

Tina Majorino, Whoopi Goldberg, Robbie Coltrane

Won 4 Primetime Emmys. Another 8 wins & 14 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 (Tina Majorino) follows a white rabbit (Kiran Shah) down a rabbit-hole into a whimsical Wonderland, where she meets characters like the delightful Cheshire Cat (Whoopi Goldberg), the clumsy White Knight (Christopher Lloyd), the rude Major Caterpillar (Sir Ben Kingsley), and the hot-tempered Queen of Hearts (Miranda Richardson), 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:

alice character | caterpillar character | the mad hatter character | queen of hearts character | march hare character | 

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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 Germany USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

28 February 1999 (USA)

Also Known As:

Alice in Wonderland

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:

65 min (2 episodes) 129 min (video) 131 min (TV) (2 parts)

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Much was made of the enlarging of the Mad Hatter's head in the 2010 version of Alice in Wonderland, but it was done first and done very well in this version, 11 years earlier.

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Goofs

When Alice is enlarged from the bottle, her arm keeps changing from halfway out the window to her entire arm out the window.

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Quotes

Alice: I'm not staying here listening for you to be rude.
The March Hare: You'll find better places for that, I'm sure.

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Alternate Versions

In subsequent reruns, this film has been trimmed to 100 minutes so that it can be shown in two hours instead of three.

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Connections

Version of Alice's Misadventures in Wonderland (2004)

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Soundtracks

Speak Roughly To Your Boy
Music by Richard Hartley
Lyrics by Lewis Carroll
Performed by Elizabeth Briggs

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.