How wonderful it is to see this fine actress carry a film and carry it so beautifully.

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

"Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" is mostly faithful to the classic children's book, even to the title (notice it is not "Alice in Wonderland"). A who's who of British talent, it is a wonderful film, if taken according to the prescription.First of all, find a copy of the British release, which is widescreen. In full screen mode, which was the American version I picked up, one totally loses the BAFTA-winning cinematography by Geoffrey Unsworth, and the movie is cheapened to a lot of meaningless close-ups. Also, be sure to watch it on home video and not commercial television, as the movie works better without commercials. Without commercials it's shorter, and that's a fine start.The good: Fiona Fullerton is a lovely and winsome Alice, and has remarkably good line readings for someone who is about sixteen, if not a tad younger. This might seem old for Alice, but she's charming and daddies can watch the show with their (probably bored) kids, enjoying the pretty girl without the guilt of pedophilia.Also good: Flora Robson was born to play the Queen of Hearts. Peter Bull, in drag, is hilarious as the Duchess and it's a shame he hasn't more to do. Robert Helpmann, the horrifying child-catcher in "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang", plays a snippish but ultimately likable Mad Hatter. His Hatter is not really mad, just very discourteous. Hatter's sidekick, the March Hare, is played with suitable flashes of insanity by Peter Sellers (who also got one of the best make-up jobs). You can believe Sellers' March Hare has flipped.Also on the good side: Alice meets actor Michael Hordern as the Mock Turtle and Peter Sellers' old comrade from BBC's "The Goon Show" as a wacky Gryphon. Using his "Jim Spriggs" voice from "The Goon Show" -- and if you don't know the Goons, check out BBC Radio 4-extra -- Milligan is treat from beginning to end, when you can make out what he's saying. While this Gryphon/Mock Turtle scene lacks the sublimity John Gielgud and Malcolm Muggeridge brought to Jonathan Miller's weird "Alice in Wonderland", it becomes one of the most joyous scenes in this movie. (Watch for Spike Milligan's momentary suggestion of recognition when Peter Sellers' March Hare rushes past him in the courtroom scene).Ralph Richardson is a knowing caterpillar (compare his forceful performance to the equally good but terribly frightened caterpillar of Michael Redgrave in Jonathan Miller's wacky retake). Richardson is the best caterpillar in any "Alice." The bad: The sets are pretty awful, but they all had to be done by hand in 1972. No computers. So that's forgivable. What is not forgivable are some of the costumes. The March Hare is good, and the Gryphon. Dudley Moore's Dormouse costume is incredibly unconvincing, while actors like Michael Crawford (the White Rabbit) got buried in ridiculous masks.The ugly: John Barry's music is always welcome in movie scores, so his background music is lovely. The songs, however, are terrible. Songs actually from the book ("The Lobster Quadrille" for instance) come off slightly better than those that have lyrics written for the movie, but John Barry lets the side down when it comes to putting music to Carroll's words. The best policy is, except for the Mock Turtle scene, fast forward through songs. They will bore children and parents alike.Also ugly: the cast. Note, not the acting. The acting is marvelous. Some of the best British actors of the twentieth century are piled into this movie like a clown car. But the movie is top-heavy with talent. Is that a bad thing? Yes.Why plug Michael Crawford in as the White Rabbit, or Dudley Moore as the Dormouse, if you're going to cover their faces? As for the characters who are not masked, Flora Robson is remarkable as the Queen, but Dennis Price has little to do as the King except hang around the Queen. Rodney Bewes' ("The Likely Lads") Knave of Hearts has dialogue consisting of little more than hiccups. Michael Jayston is superb with his few lines in the framing scenes; one almost wishes the movie had been about Dodgson than Alice. But was he necessary in such a tiny role?Most of the actors are in here because they are excellent actors (Richardson, Sellers, etc.) or because they are recognizable even under heavy make-up (Roy Kinnear as the Cheshire Cat). But if one is acquainted with Brit actors of this period, the movie becomes a game of spot-the-actor; and that detracts from the movie as a whole. This will probably become less of a problem the farther away we get from 1972, as so many of these fine performers will have died and been forgotten, especially by Americans. Also ugly: the further we get from 1972, the worse the special effects look to the unsympathetic viewer spoiled by rampant CGI.Overall, this is a solid "Alice" performed by actors who, mostly, do not mug but take their parts seriously. The greatest drawback for this and every "Alice" is that we have live actors performing roles that are really more suitable for animation. One day, maybe we'll get a completely CGI "Alice." What a sad day that will be.

This charming musical adaptation of Carroll's text may be my favorite "Alice" film yet. Regarding the music, it is beautiful and enchanting, and almost hypnotic in tone, drawing us in to a fantasy realm of wonder and chaos. The songs in here astound: alongside most of the poems from Carroll's text ("You Are Old, Father William" and "Tis' the Voice of the Lobster" do not appear, and a few poems, such as "Turtle Soup," are not done in song, but still appear), there are several songs simply taken from lines in the book ("The Duchess is Waiting," "Curiouser and Curiouser," "Off With Their Heads," etc.), and the songs that are original numbers ("The Pun Song" is my favorite) do not get in the way at all. There is a collective, musical whole.The characters are also well defined: most, if not all, of the portrayals of the characters in this film can be found somewhere on my favorites list. Fiona Fullerton is my second favorite Alice (a scant percentage below Amelia Shankley/Coral Browne from "Dreamchild"), the only thing dragging her down from first place being her age: she is close to twice as old as both the Alice in the stories and the real Alice Liddell, both of whom she plays in this film. That being said, once she starts talking, and later singing (I understand her singing was dubbed, but I couldn't care less), this fact barely intrudes. She SOUNDS like Alice, she LOOKS like Alice, and she is, overall, nearly perfect as this childhood icon. Michael Crawford is equally fantastic as the White Rabbit...it's hard to believe he would later play Erik, the titular character of "Phantom of the Opera," when he starts talking and speaking. His performance as the Rabbit is just as great as this legendary role, and I'm surprised he doesn't get more credit for it. Sir Robert Helpmann, who disturbed generations of adults and children as the malevolent Child Catcher from "Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang," plays another top-hatted, beak-nosed character here: the Mad Hatter, and he is excellent at this role. Dudley Moore's Dormouse is almost unintelligible, but he adds a depth and likability to this often overlooked character, and Peter Sellers, a.k.a. Inspector Clouseau from "The Pink Panther," is wonderful as the March Hare. Flora Robson's Queen of Hearts seems to come straight out of this Carrollian's nightmares: she is the epitome of Carroll's tyrannical, foul villainess, and, having quite a bit of experience as queens and villains prior to this film, it's no surprise she plays literature's greatest evil queen so perfectly. Peter Bull and Patsy Rowlands as the Duchess and the Cook are brilliant, and Davy Kaye steals the Caucus-Race Limelight as the Mouse with the Long, Sad Tail.Part of what helps these actors is the costumes: these outfits make them look almost unrecognizable, in many cases. This is both a good and a bad thing: it's good for us, as the viewers, because, unlike in many other all-star cast "Alice" films, the big-wig names and faces don't distract us, allowing us to see the characters: so, for example, instead of saying, "Oh, look! It's Spike Milligan as the Gryphon!" we say, "Oh, look! That's an interesting Gryphon! Wonder who plays him...Spike Milligan? Cool!" (It's a bad thing for the performers, because I imagine those costumes couldn't have been particularly comfortable.) And lest we forget them, the sets are magnificent: while faded, thanks to the number of bad quality DVD prints existing, they still manage to be colorful and magical. This Wonderland carries a "Willy Wonka" feel to it, creating a storybook quality in every scene.My only real gripes are these: first, and already mentioned, is Fiona Fullerton's age. Second, the editing: this film is extremely accurate, and, yet, it isn't: most of Carroll's text and dialogue is kept, either via song or actual spoken dialogue, but two scenes are cut out: first is the infamous Giant Puppy scene, which rarely makes it into "Alice" films in the first place, and is, thus, somewhat excusable. But there is no reason to skip what might be one of the most key points of Carroll's story: "We're All Mad Here." While the Cheshire Cat does appear (played by Roy Kinnear), his conversation with Alice, involving this oh-so-famous line, is omitted. It was filmed, but never included in the final print. Why? It's arguably the most important point in the entire first book! It's also, in my opinion, one of the best parts, and is present in almost every other "straight-out" adaptation of the story I can think of, aside from the Czech film by Jan Svankmajer. This just pushes my buttons...particularly since this film includes Tweedledee and Tweedledum from "Through the Looking-Glass." Fred and Frank Cox are terrific as the Tweedles, but couldn't we have just stuck with the first book, especially given the "real world" premise? (Another problem, especially since I've read the original manuscript...but I digress.) Sigh...all that ranting aside, this is an excellent adaptation of the "Alice" tales. No real restoration of this film has been made yet, despite its being released on VHS and DVD several times. I sincerely hope such a restoration is done in the near future...this lovely film, despite its few flaws, deserves it!

I am an Alice obsessive. I recently saw the Depp/Burton project and was horrified at the opportunity missed. So I turned to this, surprised that I had not seen it before.This at least has a couple advantages. Though far less colorful and lacking imagination in the design, it conforms to the text mostly and draws images from the original drawings. That is to the good, because the original has some profound structure and some lines that zing. If you don't have the patience to read the little book, you won't get this anyway, so to recommend the film on this basis is sorta useless.Where Depp pranced and drew something from who knows where, this had Peter Sellers! Peter Sellers as the March Hare! Amazing. He is paired with Dudley Moore and some nobody. This was during a period of substance abuse for them both. While they only speak the lines from the book, it is rewarding just seeing them.There is a very clever extension of Carroll's framing device of Alice in the bank, dreaming. The extension has her on that famous boat trip with Carroll and others where the story was supposedly told. (It actually had been told in pieces developed over seven years, with pieces added in the writing.)Though we have the story more or less as written, the production is a disaster. This is because the filmmaker missed the tone of the thing. This is not silly nonsense that is amenable to a high-school play nonchalance; this is deep silly, funny stuff that makes you laugh and if you think about it demonstrates what von Neumann mathematically proved 80 years later: logic doesn't cut it.The book was written by the leading logician in England, ensconced at Oxford. They miss that this is disorder that matters. Some filmmakers get this. I'd like to see Richard Kellydo an Alice.Because Disney decided Alice's dress was blue, it is blue here. Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

This version follows the classic story faithfully, if a bit unimaginatively. As the original is itself somewhat loose structurally, it makes any film version inevitably seem rambling. I know of no cinematic version of Alice in Wonderland that completely successfully overcomes this. This 1972 is usual in that respect. The set design is perhaps too closely modelled on the original Alice drawings, and as such, it is colourful and lavish although it looks rather dated and stagy by modern standards. One major drawback (which seems consistent with all the other Alice films) is that the songs are completely forgettable. A very youthful Fiona Fullerton is convincing as Alice, and a fun aspect of the film is to guess the identities of the heavily made-up cast of well-known actors, some of whom are more easily guessable than others.