Alice in Wonderland Reviews

There’s something very unsettling about this version of Alice in Wonderland. Perhaps it’s the makeup and costuming which faithfully recreates the original drawings from the book(s) and places them on actors. The bloated faces, elongated limbs and animal-human hybrids translate as nightmarish creations in three-dimensions whereas on the page they could look charmingly asymmetrical and dreamily outlandish.

I think the level of performances have something to do with it. A vast group of character actors, up-and-comers (at the time) and big-name stars (again, at the time) deliver a wide range of performances. Cary Grant, unseen only heard, as the Mock Turtle reproves my point that he never slummed in any of his roles. Gary Cooper jettisons his normally stoic demeanor and dashing good looks for a more playful, senile knight. W.C. Fields is perfectly cast as Humpty Dumpty, the sheer absurdity of the whole enterprise fits his theatricality like a glove. And the three queens vary from outlandish (Edna May Oliver), petulant (May Robson) and utterly sweet-but-slightly-crazy (Louise Fazenda). Each of them turn in wonderful work, even if sequences involving two or more of them begin to get hallucinatory and confounding for just the sheer difference in acting styles alone.

The film didn’t really call for an all-star cast since most of them are covered in makeup, or it’s just their voices that we hear, and many of them are wasted in cameo roles. There’s so many characters and actors vying for attention that the film opens with a prolonged round-down of the cast members in and out of costume. This is achieved through a storybook pages being flipped through, as the actor’s head shot and name takes up one page, the next is a photo of them in costume and the character they play. And I think many of them overacted their little hearts out to try and survive against the insanity of the costumes and sets.

The croquet game uses real flamingos and hedgehogs, and there’s something unsettling about seeing real animals being used as props for an anarchic and fairly violent version of a subdued game. And the Mad Hatter’s tea party is enough to make you throw your hands up in the air and scream out “What the hell is this movie!?” I mean that in the best, most loving way possible. Even if the scene with the talking/singing pudding and mutton leg did freak me out and leave me very confused. But the Walrus and the Carpenter sequence was quite nice seeing as it involved animation from the Fleischer studio. I just wish that they had let it play out in full instead of cutting back and forth between the live actors telling the story and the animated sequence giving it full, spongy, bouncy life.

And what of Alice, Charlotte Henry, how does she fare in all of this? Well, I think her propulsive, forward moment is a nice touch for the character. But when really disturbing things happen to Alice in the book(s), she seems genuinely confused, disturbed and freaked out by it all. Henry has decided to take the all-smiling all-the-time approach. And that leads to sequences becoming horror film-lite in more than a few instances. The changing of the Duchess’ son from an infant into a pig should have freaked her out, at least a little. Here, Henry is charmed by the whole thing. Laughing, giggling and seemingly having great fun at the fact that a human infant just turned into a pig in her arms. This seems like a gross miscalculation on her part.

I don’t know if there has ever been a definitive film version of Alice in Wonderland. Sure, some viewers may pick this one, and it is a fine, wild, weird ride. The film is a true marvel of production design and costuming, even if it is unevenly acted and the storyline is Cliff Notes-esque. Others will choose the Disney version, or maybe one of the dozen televised versions. Maybe the episodic structure, clever wordplay and sheer bizarreness of the whole story are better suited to the page than the screen. It is imperfect, but it’s still a damn fine try at making a cohesive film out of the Alice stories.