Alice in Wonderland

  Well after a long hiatus during the holidays we are finally back to movie watching! We had a great Christmas and then ventured off to Galveston for a wedding aboard a cruise ship! It was a really great experience, but the journey back home was pretty exhausting with bad roads. Anyway, back to movies!

We start off this new year back in the A's, as we have to backtrack a couple movies that we got on Black Friday. This is the original cartoon Alice in Wonderland, so it's good.

Alice is a young girl who doesn't really care for books and what society expects from her. She's just daydreaming with her cat Dinah, and talking about what her dream world would be like. All of a sudden she sees a white rabbit in a coat running like mad. She is very curious and follows him. He goes into a rabbit hole and she follows him and falls down into a deep dark pit. As she's falling the only thing she is worried about is saying goodbye to her cat. The rabbit is very fast and she has trouble catching up with it.

Her first incident involves a tiny locked door. In order to fit into it she takes a drink from a small vial that shrinks her, but then she's too small to retrieve a key and must take a bit from a small cookie that makes her big. It makes it too big and she starts crying, which then floods the room with her tears. She then is able to take a sip from the vial again and floats through the keyhole of the door.

The next venture involves her trying to get a dry but failing by walking around a rock with a bunch of other creatures. She then sees the rabbit again run off into the forest and she follows him. Then she comes across Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum who then go on to force her to listen to a story about walruses and oysters. I've never understood this story. After she leaves the twins, she then is joined with some singing flowers who are trying to figure out what kind of flower she is. This is one of the few scenes I like i n this movie. It's just so magical!

Then she stumbles her way to a wise caterpillar who is hopped up on psychedelics from his hookah. He drives Alice crazy with all of his absurd musings and she runs off in a stamper.All she wants is to be her normal size again because she is currently 3 inches tall. She then again has an issue of figuring out how to fix her size after eating two sides of a mushroom, one that makes her tall, the other that shortens her. She saves the leftovers just in case she needs them.

She then meets the Cheshire cat who also confuses her. He leads her to the March Hare and Mad Hatter's UnBirthday Tea Party. These two are really crazy, but this scene is another one of my favorites. I love the drunk little mouse and all the different types of tea pots there are. After becoming yet again frustrated by all the absurdity, and finally coming across the White Rabbit again, she heads off into a forest.

She gets lost and decides she just wants to go home. The Cheshire cat then reappears and opens a door to the Queen of Hearts. Here Alice helps some cards paint some roses red, but then they  get beheaded since the queen disapproved. She and the Queen play some croquet. The queen cheats so she can win and Alice's croquet bat and ball don't cooperate. The Cheshire Cat messes with the cat, pissing her off so much so that she decides to behead Alice. The tiny King gets her to have a trial instead. It's the most absurd trial and Alice uses her leftover mushroom to escape. She gets chased by everyone at the court and those who she met along the way on her journey today. She runs through almost every place she previously visited and makes it back to the doorknob.

We learn that she was only dreaming the whole time!! She wakes up and goes off with her sister to tea with Dinah in tow.

I've never really loved the story of Alice in Wonderland. It just gets a bit too bizarre for me. There are a couple scenes that I love as  I mentioned before. I also couldn't help but notice that Alice totally looked like Cinderella's baby. Her demeanor and attitude also reminded me of Nancy Drew for some reason.

Andrew's Closing Thought: The movie is completely nonsense.

Up Next: Bad Boys II