Alice in Wonderland (1951)

Review by All Movie Guide
Not fully appreciated upon its initial release by either critics or audiences, Alice in Wonderland has grown in stature over the years. Its primary failing is that its conventional approach (in both script and design) fails to capture the special dreamlike quality of the Lewis Carroll source material. However, on its own terms, the film is enormously entertaining. The animation is top-notch throughout, but especially so in the sequences involving the Cheshire Cat, the climactic card chase, Alice's many changes of size, and the wonderful Mad Hatter tea party. The actors providing the voices are extremely well cast and are responsible for a great deal of the film's success. Ed Wynn and Jerry Colonna capture the inspired lunacy of the Mad Hatter and the March Hare respectively, and Sterling Holloway is an appropriately disturbing Cheshire Cat. Kathryn Beaumont's Alice is charming, stubborn, bewildered, bossy, prissy, obedient, polite, and irritated by turns, and Beaumont makes the many swift changes believable. Also noteworthy is the score, most of which consists of very short and sometimes incomplete numbers, but still is quite beguiling. Pay special attention to the lovely "In a World of My Own" and the lush "All in the Golden Afternoon." Although Alice in Wonderland may have been taken somewhat for granted originally, the next films for this directing triumvirate -- Peter Pan and Lady and the Tramp -- would be recognized immediately as animated classics. ~ Craig Butler, All Movie Guide