Alice in Wonderland (1999) (TV)

Director:

Nick Willing

Writers (WGA):

Lewis Carroll (novel)
Peter Barnes (teleplay)

Release Date:

28 February 1999 (USA)

Genre:

Family | Adventure | Fantasy

Tagline:

A Masterpiece of Imagination. . .

Plot:

The wizards behind "Merlin" and "The Odyssey" combine Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass" into a three-hour special that just gets curiouser and curiouser.

Plot Keywords:

Rabbit | White Rabbit | Mad Hatter | Stage Fright | Pool Of Tears

Awards:

Won 4 Primetime Emmys. Another 1 win & 6 nominations

Cast

Robbie Coltrane	...	Ned Tweedledum
Whoopi Goldberg	...	Cheshire Cat
Ben Kingsley	...	Major Caterpillar
Christopher Lloyd	...	White Knight
Pete Postlethwaite	...	Carpenter
Miranda Richardson	...	Queen of Hearts / Society Woman
Martin Short	...	Mad Hatter / Chinless Idiot
Peter Ustinov	...	Walrus
George Wendt	...	Fred Tweedledee
Gene Wilder	...	Mock Turtle
Tina Majorino	...	Alice
Ken Dodd	...	Mr. Mouse
Jason Flemyng	...	Sir Jack, the Knave of Hearts / Cad
Sheila Hancock	...	Cook
Simon Russell Beale	...	King of Hearts / Society Man

Also Known As:

Alice im Wunderland (Germany)

Runtime:

USA:150 min | 65 min (2 episodes) | USA:129 min (VHS version) | Finland:131 min (TV) (2 parts)

Country:

UK | USA | Germany

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Certification:

Singapore:PG | Australia:G | USA:Not Rated (DVD) | UK:U | USA:PG

Filming Locations:

Burnham Beeches, Buckinghamshire, England, UK

Company:

Babelsberg International Film Produktion

Trivia:

This is, chronologically speaking, the 12th adaptation of Lewis Carroll's famous novel "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland."

Goofs:

Continuity: When the Queen of Hearts decides to decapitate the cards who were painting the roses red, Alice hides them in her skirt to save them. However, they never get out, since no further reference is made to this in the rest of the film.

Quotes:

White Knight: I see you're admiring my box. It's my own invention, to keep sandwiches in. You see, I carry it upside-down so they don't get wet when it rains.
Alice: ...But they can drop out. The lid is open.
White Knight: So, THAT's what happened to my sandwiches.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Phoebe in Wonderland (2008)

Decent TV Version

I love the two Alice books and quite often I find myself looking through the pages, reading some of my favorite parts.

I think for a TV_version, this film works quite well, it is a treat to watch all those celebrities becoming some of the most famous characters in literature. Strangely though, my favorite sequence is the one with Peter Ustinov and Pete Postlethwaite as the Walrus and the Carpenter, probably the only scene in the movie that does not contain CGI.

So, why only six stars? As in most versions, the makers of the movie have mixed all kinds of elements from "Alice in Wonderland" with "Through the looking glass" (Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum, The Walrus and the Carpenter, The White Knight). It may work, if you really look at the books just as a collection of episodes, but whenever this is done, the makers miss the point of the books. Alice in "Through the looking glass" is quite different from Alice in "Alice in wonderland" and also, there is a completely different composition to the latter book which is explained in the preface and which finds no acknowledgment whatsoever here. I think the makers of this movie again don't understand the books at all and though I enjoy watching these scenes independently from each other, the whole leaves me unsatisfied.

I have gotten used to mixing the Alice stories, Walt Disney has done the same thing and others as well. But what bothers me most about this film it that it turns the whole thing into a story of initiation. Come on.... Alice does not dare to perform a song in front of her parent's guest but after walking through Wonderland she finally does? This is just plain wrong and completely in contrast to the meaning of the books. Why would you want do make sense out of nonsense? The books are meant to portray Victorian stereotypes, make fun of language etc, but not to enrich a child to become more independent and self-assured. Moreover, it does not make sense at all, why Alice should finally be able to sing in front of the others.

All in all, this movie has fine performances and puppets and decent (considering the time it was made and it being made for TV) CGI, is nice to look at but in the end only mediocre TV-entertainment.