Wonderful Movie

Sadly Over-hyped

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

after so many others adaptations, it is not easy to say why you prefer it. for cast, off course. for Natalie Gregory in special . for atmosphere. and for the naivety. for the status of story without high ambitions, out of the circle of special effects, childish in delicate manner, unrealistic and , maybe, not real close to the book but brave and admirable and comfortable. and this is a real virtue. to be the same for new generations and ages. for preserve a special flavor who is not prey of a specific definition. songs and actors and the flavor of vanilla pudding. this is all. a show about a girl in front with bizarre characters, against a terrible monster, discovering the importance of small things. and it is enough for a lovely story.

Lewis Caroll's Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass are classic stories, oddball and fairly difficult to adapt but colourful and quite magical. As a child my favourite adaptations were this and the Disney film(the first one I saw), and re-watching this 2-part version again it still is a favourite. It's not perfect, not all the casting(a vast majority do) and songs(maligned but not that bad, more hit and miss) work, and while the faithfulness to the stories is very admirable and pays off very well often some scenes can drag as a result of being a little too faithful.The sets are very colourful and designed lovingly, with a mix of eeriness when down the rabbit hole and sumptuous colour with the Flower Garden. If there was a choice between in the Alice in Wonderland half and the Through the Looking Glass half, marginal preferences would go to Through the Looking Glass, the visuals are more vivid and the characters a little kookier. Some of the more memorable performances of the whole adaptation are in Through the Looking Glass too, and the pacing is a little more secure. The costumes are rather weird- Cheshire Cat, Bill the Lizard, the Oysters and Dodo Bird were among the worst cases. But the ones for Alice, White Knight, Red Queen and Queen of Hearts are very appropriate and there is a soft spot for White Rabbit's too. The atmosphere is a great mix of eerie, oddball, funny, whimsical and colourful.And the dialogue is clever, faithful in spirit to the story, some of it is literally lifted out of the pages of the book(s). You do wish that the Mock Turtle's melancholic poem was left intact though. In regard to the story, it is mostly very well-adapted though a bit draggy in spots. Of individual scenes, faring best are the Mad Hatter tea party, the train scene, the Old Father William musical number, the trial, Jam Tomorrow, Jam Yesterday, the touching We Are Dancing and Emotions numbers and of course the first appearance of the Jabberwocky(as a child that was terrifying, and even to a 21-year old it was scary). The ending is also a tear-jerker. Some scenes didn't fare so well, I don't remember a single thing about the scene with the Mouse, Dodo and Lory Bird, the Caterpillar scene would have fared better with the whole thing about the mushrooms(it did seem a little pointless), the Lion and the Unicron scene is awkwardly staged and Ernest Borgnine seemed ill at ease and the Walrus and the Carpenter number is fun but suffers from cheap costuming.Which brings us onto the songs and casting. The background scoring and orchestrations are excellent and beautifully done, the Overtures over the opening credits show real promise and the creepiness and whimsy that pulsates the scoring throughout are used most effectively. The songs have been maligned, and in a way understandably. There are some good ones, though some suffer from being too brief or too samey. The best way to describe the songs are hit-and-miss. The hits were Old Father William(with choreography that seemed to be paying homage to Shirley Temple); There's No Way Home is a beautiful song and sung in a way that is a mix of vocally understated Frank Sinatra and Burl Ives; the very poignant We Ae Dancing with some of the best visuals of the adaptation; the intimidating Off With their Heads and the riotous Jam Tomorrow, Jam Yesterday. There are a few misses though, I Hate Dogs and Cats is probably the most forgettable song in all senses in the entire adaptation; There's Something to Say as well as being quite badly sung is no better; Laugh is rather dull despite Anthony Newley's singing; Lion and the Unicorn is a tad repetitive and Nonsense lacks irony, is not as poignant as Caroll's Mock Turtle poem in the book and is somewhat contradictory too.Most of the acting is fine, but like with the songs some don't work. Shelley Winters, John Stamos and Donald O'Connor are wasted; Donna Mills is competent if unmemorable; Telly Salavas is too sympathetic for Cheshire Cat; Scott Biao performs with no real feeling or understanding of his few lines; Beau Bridges is a somewhat effeminate Unicorn; Ernest Borgnine looked uncomfortable as the Lion and Jonathan Winters is rather dull as Humpty Dumpty. Natalie Gregory however is a very endearing Alice, carrying the adaptation very well and charmingly and with spunk. The cast are like a Who's Who and it's really fun to spot. These were the performers that stood out. Sammy Davis Jnr plays Caterpillar with great personality and firmness and still is a great singer and dancer, the White Rabbit of Red Buttons is suitably jittery, Carol Channing is a riot as the White Queen, Robert Morley's King of Hearts is probably definitive, Lloyd Bridge's White Knight is chivalrous and meaningful, Jayne Meadows is a genuinely intimidating Queen of Hearts and Ann Jillian's Red Queen is performed with real gusto and menace(she also sings Emotions wonderfully).And we also have Ringo Starr's melancholic Mock Turtle, Jack Warden's Wise Owl, Karl Malden's stuffy Walrus, Harvey Korman's imposing White King, Anthony Newley's very funny Mad Hatter, Arte Johnson's nervous Doormouse and Roddy McDowell's twitchy March Hare. In fact, while some like Patrick Duffy, Sally Struthers and Pat Morita are merely cameo appearances, the acting is good enough. Tweedledum and Tweedledee are great fun too, and isn't that Jabberwocky scary or what? Overall, along with Disney's it is one of the best adaptations of the book and is the most faithful to the book(s), Nick Willing's 1999 adaptation is faithful too. 8/10 Bethany Cox

This is an 80's TV adaptation of both Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. A story symbolizing the growing up of Alice. I didn't watch this movie as a kid, so I don't have any fond memories. I just watched it as an adult because the cast made me curious (or should I say curiouser and curiouser?) And the cast is definitely impressive. I was especially excited to see Ringo Star as the Mock Turtle. The acting isn't exceptional, but I would think that this is because of the fact that it is a children's movie and they tend to exaggerate acting in those. Natalie Gregory wasn't bad as Alice. For a child performer not very annoying.Special effects are not the best, and in many cases pretty laughable, but one shouldn't forget that it is a TV movie that came out in 1985. Other than that, the decoration is very beautiful and it is all very colourful.It feels a bit too long. Too many songs, sometimes it feels like it drags on and there isn't enough action happening. I feel that great book could have been adapted to be more exciting.All in all it isn't a bad movie. I believe a child would like it even more than I did, and the good part is that as an adult one can enjoy watching it withe them, at least for the first time.

Producer Allen was either the most amiable man in Hollywood or else paid the best salaries or else had major blackmail material on half the town in order to enable him to amass the incredible all-star casts that he put together in the 70's and early 80's. Here, taking a break from the fully exhausted disaster genre for which he was famous, he made this two-part telefilm based on the books of Lewis Carroll. Gregory plays a petulant little girl who dreams her way into the wacky and confounding world known as Wonderland, first through a rabbit hole and later through a mirror. While there, all the time striving to get home, she comes upon all manner of creature and a variety of royalty (based on cards and chess pieces) who make life difficult and/or confusing for her. Part one is the more familiar tale (immortalized on film many other times, but perhaps most notably in an animated Disney version) while part two has more characters and is darker in tone (thanks mostly to a dragon called The Jabberwock which, while creaky and obviously phony to sophisticated older viewers, may be quite terrifying to youngsters!) Though all mini-series of the era featured huge casts of name actors, Allen really outdid himself here with a roster of performers who range from legendary to popular to unjustly notable. Sadly, the nature of the material and the set up of this project meant that the majority of them would not be given a great deal to do. Winters, for example, barely appears at all and has no lines to speak of. O'Connor is basically the same, which is a heinous waste of talent. Meadows, however, whose husband (Steve) Allen wrote the songs for this, has a far more substantial role. While it's fun to play "Spot the Star" and see them all decked out in their often outrageous clothing and make-up, most of the time the film falls flat and the guest stars don't really shine so much as show up. Standouts in the production include Jillian and Channing who, fortunately, have very significant roles in the second half and who perform with gusto. Newley seems quite right for his blustery and veddy British character as well. It's nice to see Davis still going at it as well. Bridges injects some heart into his role. It doesn't get much campier than Lawrence and Gorme as Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee! Apart from the script simply devoting more time to some really unmemorable songs (as compared to the unforgettable ditties "I'm Late" and "The Unbirthday Song" from the animated version) than to the acting scenes, the primary liability is Gregory. The entire project hinges on having just the right person as Alice and this little girl is agonizing. She's a pretty decent singer and quite a capable little dancer, but her acting is atrocious and her whiny, sing-song speaking voice is like daggers to the ear. Besides this, she's charmless when she should be ingratiating and she's snotty when she ought to be sympathetic. She's just not a likable persona in this role. The script sets her up for failure by having her constantly recap to herself everything that is transpiring and this gets old very fast. The costumes for this production are fairly extravagant, as is the make-up, but the sets are almost all Astroturf and silk flowers with a fake sky backdrop. Incidentally, this film reunites at least five cast-mates from "The Poseidon Adventure" and three from "Beyond the Poseidon Adventure", though most of them do not interact with one another. It's colorful and worth a look, especially for star-gazers, but a lot of it is tiresome and uninspired.