Movie Project: Day 6 - Alice in Wonderland

First, the good news: Rini sat through 95% of this movie. The bad news: Neither one of us really understood what was going on most of the time. Caitlin has a better handle on what Lewis Carroll was trying to get across in the book, and therefore has a bit more insight to the meaning behind the scenes in Disney's 13th full length animated production, Alice in Wonderland.

When the movie was originally released, it was met with scathing reviews, which makes sense. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson wrote Alice's Adventures in Wonderland as a parody on the upper class manners and protocol of British society, the which to be displayed in a cartoon format would send it over the top in terms of whimsy and inanity.

All of a sudden, I'm not surprised Rini was able to stay seated for most of the film.

I thought that she would have been completely attentive every time the White Rabbit was on screen, but that wasn't the case. Of course, this movie has a lot of characters and a lot to take in, and the sequences don't really flow together. Then again, having five directors working on the movie didn't help much either. Nothing is explained, mostly because the explanations would take another three movies, and wouldn't be nearly as entertaining.

That's not to say the movie was a waste of time. The classic animation style was very fluid and conveyed the appropriate sense of chaos which was prevalent throughout all the Wonderland scenes. Nevertheless, knowing the artists studied Nazi films as reference footage for the card scenes was rather creepy.

Rini's biggest reaction was when the Cheshire Cat made the Red Queen pull her dress over her head, thus enraging the Queen. At this point Rini got up and shouted, "I'M MAD!" I replied, "Yes, she is mad!" Rini didn't miss a beat and piped up, "ME TOO!" She calmed down for the last few minutes for her to see that it was all a dream, but I'm thinking that she'll have to watch it again to fully understand what was going on. And next time, I think she'll watch it with mommy, since Caitlin has read the book, and actually understands most, if not all, of the movie.

As for rewatch-ability, I asked Rini what she thought of the movie after the credits rolled, to which she had no response. Scaling it down a bit, I asked if she thought it was fun. A brief "yeah" was enough to placate my insecurity of showing this movie to my three year old daughter though the film has been known to plague children with nightmares for years. At least amoung some of my friends. Nonetheless, I wasn't overly worried because she has seen both Nightmare Before Christmas and Coraline, and has not become overly warped because of it.

She's going to kill me in my sleep now. Isn't she.