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Alice in Wonderland (Masterpiece Edition)

Alice in Wonderland (Masterpiece Edition)

List Price: $29.99
Your Price: $22.49
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Disney's horror film?
Review: Back in the day, Disney made some great animated films. In fact, you know it's decent if it was made when Walt Disney was still alive. Now, it's a money grubbing corporation cranking out flix and merchandise for $$ like Full Moon Productions. I mean, c'mon! Lion King 2? Little Mermaid 2? Lady and the Tramp 2? Aladdin 3? Cinderella 2? At least twenty different versions of 101 Dalmations? Lets wake up here. Disney used to put out some fantastic films, and Alice In Wonderland is right there at the top. It's the most experimental and disturbing of the Disney features. It's also hilarious! Naturally it doesn't follow the book(s) 100%, but I don't think I've ever seen an adaptaion of Alice that has(if Terry Gilliam got ahold of the rights, THEN you'd see something spectacular!). Some reviewers whine about how this is "boring", "confusing" and "inappropriate for children." Grow up, will ya? It's Alice In Wonderland, not Eraserhead! What kind of adult is "confused" by a Disney film that my daughter can follow? Believe me, this movie will NOT corrupt or traumatize your child. You have the Stanley Runk guarantee on that. Unless your child is a genius and more educated in the ways of the world than you are, they will not pick up on any kind of drug references. And it won't inspire your daughter to smoke a cigar if she sees a talking walrus doing it. My daughter and I watch this all the time. We laugh, we sing, we quote it, we have more fun with this film than any other Disney film. To my knowledge she hasn't started smoking cigars yet. So put that in your hookah and smoke it, Mister! If you haven't seen this(unlikely), pick it up for sure. It's so enjoyable and made in a time when Disney took chances and didn't adhere to the moronic P.C. formulas they do today.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: This Movie was 'NOT' released in widescreen to begin with!
Review: The Alice in Wonderland DVD is released in its original theatrical aspect ratio of approximately 1.33:1 - or as we know it, fullscreen. Before you start bagging any dvd for not being released in widescreen you might want to find out of it was in widescreen to begin with.

Further, to all those who are offended by "bong" smoking or the "magic mushrooms" you really need to wake up. Kids don't think of drugs when they watch this film, they see it on a completely different level. When I watched it as a child all I saw were funny characters and a world of wonder - It was amazing!

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: No widescreen!
Review: My low rating is for the DVD, NOT the movie content. I will say that if you are a narrow-minded hypocrite, this movie is not for you. Grandparents might want to buy it to watch with their grandchildren because the parents won't let them watch it. Did it cause you to grow up wrong because you watched it as a child? Well, judging by some of the remarks, I'll say "Yes." Lighten up people! This is a fantasy to help stimulate imagination.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Bonus Features Not So Great
Review: The Cartoon itself is a classic. I really enjoyed that. However, the special features were at best mediocre. The games are very misleading, they really aren't games at all. The extra song for the cheshire cat was done as a 'video' in a way, with clips from the movie.
I think that if you're buying it for the extra features, you're going to be severely let down.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: INAPPROPRIATE FOR CHILDREN
Review: We bought this DVD for our daughter and quickly returned it. They first problem we had was when there was a walrus SMOKING A CIGAR? Thought it was odd for a children's movie, but got over it. Later in the film a butterfly is seen floating on a giant MUSHROOM, SMOKING A BONG?!?!
It is hard enough to shield our children from the evils that exist in the world. We do not need to introduce them to [this] via cartoons in their pre-school years!!! Shame on you Disney!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Disney's 13th Animated Feature.
Review: Alice In Wonderland was first released in movie theaters in 1951, that's over 50 years ago and Kathyeren Beaumont was a great loving voice for her title character, Alice. Like Cinderella, she has golden hair and blue eyes...but best of all, Alice has a cat called Dinah.

I do love this movie on DVD, esspecially one of my favorite bonus features-Virtual Wonderland Tea Party.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A Delight For Cabbages & Kings!
Review: Alice in Wonderland,has always been a favourite book of mine,and this Disney musical version is a brilliant adaptation.Not to mention the beautifully done animation.This new release retains the original's greatness,and throws in numerous extra goodies for children and adults alike! For example....if you like to listen in French or Spanish,the ENTIRE soundtrack is in those languages,including ALL of the songs! Kathryn Beaumont,the voice of Alice,also makes an appearance and looks as wonderful as she does in the archival footage,and leads you through some of the archive materials. For the "kids" there's a "Mad Tea Party" interactive video game,a "match the cards" card game,sing-a-long videos,and an escape from Wonderland quiz game.For the "adults" there's the rare "Thru The Mirror",Mickey Mouse cartoon,( Which inspires many Card routines for "Alice" ),and the very first Disney Television Show ("An Hour In Wonderland" with Walt Disney, Kathryn Beaumont,Bobby Driscol,Edgar Bergen,Charlie McCarthy,and Knucklehead Smith ). For "the collector" there's the trailers,numerous art galleries,a collection of song demos,storyboards for a couple of deleted scenes,"Operation Wonderland" ( A 1950 behind the scenes featurette ),a rare original "Alice" comedy from the 1930's,Walt's two televsion intros. from 1954 and 1964,and Kathryn Beaumont & Sterling Holloway performing selections on "The Fred Waring Show". Also of note,"An Hour In Wonderland",a black and white show featuring excerpts from previous Disney movies,cuts to colour when those parts are shown.( Also of note,this DVD features the FIRST release of an excerpt from "Song Of The South"! See Uncle Remus sing "Zip-A-Dee-Do-Dah" in all it's glory!).

The one disappointment is the highly touted Cheshire Cat song "I'm Odd". Firstly,the Disney folks wrote nearly 100 songs for this film.( It was planned as far back as the early 40's.)."I'm Odd" apparently got lost,the music score anyways. So,this DVD contains a NEW recording of that song....in other words it's NOT sung by Sterling Holloway,nor is there any lost animation to accompany it. It's even less of an "artifact" than the original song demos included,and frankly is a poor selling point.( This DVD would've sold without that sort of hype to begin with.) But,this is a small problem. This DVD is BRILLIANT! It's FUN! And Children,Adults,& Child/Adults can all enjoy it,alone or together!By all means,join this Mad Tea Party,and give yourself an Un-Birth Day Gift!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Very welcome Masterpiece Edition DVD
Review: This deluxe DVD packaging of Disney's incomparably magical ALICE is loaded with extras. It does not, however, have all of the material available on the deluxe Laserdisc issue of several years back, which was packed with a lot of video and audio extras. I believe the same video extras are all here plus a few new items, but the audio extras are considerably less than on the Laserdisc version. Still, great fun and lots to see and listen to, including some great historical features. Grab this before it disappears. ALICE has always been underrated by critics, but it's long been a favorite of mine and many others.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Perfect Nonsense... One of Disney's best!
Review: Despite some naysayers that claim that Alice In Wonderland is a "Class B" Disney movie, (Even Uncle Walt labelled it as such after it's rather unspetacular opening in 1951}I am forced to disagree.

Ever since I first saw Alice in the mid 70's, it somehow wormed it's way into y heart as my favorite Disney film, even though I had never read the original books of Lewis Carrol. First of all, the animation is some of the most beautiful and scay that Disney ever produced.

Katherine Beaumont makes quite the convincing Alice as well. Despite not having the singing voice of an angel, you can't help but love her. She gives the voice acting all she's got, and you truly belive that she's an 11 year old trapped in this funny, yet terrifying nightmare world.

The special features on the DVD are nothing short of fantastic, and over all, this 2 disc set was well worth the wait and price.

Despite the troubles the Disney empire has been having lately, This DVD proves that they can still do something right.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A Minor Masterpiece...
Review: The latest Disney classic to get the Masterpiece treatment on DVD, "Alice in Wonderland" comes as a two-disc set complete with trailers, featurettes, and a pristine transfer of the 1951 film.

"Alice in Wonderland" is very good, of course, but pales a bit in relation to "Snow White" and "Sleeping Beauty". While faithful to the original source material, the film still seems a bit thin and perhaps even slightly unsatisfying. Maybe this is because the story is only somewhat linear, and of such a surreal nature that it makes viewing somewhat challenging... well, somewhat.

While there are some interesting and fun vintage featurettes and presentations related to "Alice in Wonderland", the biggest drawback with this set is the glaring lack of a documentary on the creation of the film. After some twenty-odd years of pre-production, plus access to star Kathryn Beaumont, you would think that there would have been enough material to put together such a "How They Did It" documentary, a standard extra on the other Masterpiece offerings.

On the plus side, there is an extended clip from the "lost" Disney classic, "Uncle Remus" in one of the featurettes. In recent years, Disney appears to be more and more willing to consider showing some of the politically incorrect bits from its vaults (such as in the "Mickey Mouse in Black and White" compliation, among others), so perhaps this new (and intellegent) attitude bodes well for the ultimate release of "Remus." Well, we can hope so, anyway.

While not the best of Disney, "Alice" is certainly worth a looksee. Some of the techniques used are still superior to the computerized fakery so prevelent in today's animation, and would be instructive to fans and creators of animated film alike.


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