No amount of contextualism, revisionism, conversations with caterpillars, or sampling alternate slices of giant mushrooms will convince anyone that Disney's Alice in Wonderland is a classic film. It's a time-filler. Disney turned the Tea Party into an amusing ride at his various theme parks, and that's perhaps the kindest thing I can say
Alice, like other early 1950s Disney movies Cinderella, Peter Pan, and Lady and the Tramp, was team-directed by Hamilton Luske, Clyde Geromini, and Wilfred Jackson. Unlike Alice, the other 1950s Disney films represented a return to classic form for the Disney studios. Uncle Walt seems to have had very little to do with the film aside from securing the rights to use Alice illustrator Sir John Tenniel’s artwork as potential character designs. This is ironic, because one of Walt Disney’s pre-Mickey Mouse series was entitled Alice in Cartoonland, and one would think that Disney would have shown more interest in this film.
Ever the conservative film, the Disney version of Alice follows the Hollywood tradition of mashing together Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, using Carroll’s bizarre characters as excuses for "stunt casting," and presenting the final result as a whimsical, neutered fairy tale. Pre-production artwork revealed a strong Tenniel influence, but the final result prefigures Hanna-Barbera’s clean lines and flat colors. Much of Carroll’s wordplay is dumped, and what little retained is delivered in a fey, overly precious manner. Some surrealism remains, but most of that owes more to Porky in Wackyland rather than to Carroll’s text.
Is this the worst animated film released by Walt Disney Studios? I wouldn’t go that far, especially in light of the direct-to-video Aladdin sequels. Alice may very well be a suitable time-killer for undemanding children totally unfamiliar with the Lewis Carroll texts. All others will find the film annoying in proportion to their love of Carroll’s writing, and hope that Disney’s heirs don’t revive the hookah-smoking caterpillar and the Mad Hatter in a direct-to-video sequel.
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