Alice In Wonderland [DVD]

rubbish, bad animation. alice's eyes are overly bright. the scenes happen too fast (only 44 mins long). it was rather boring I got what I paied for what did I expect for a penny.

Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" is one of my favorite books of all time and thus, it is hard for a movie adaptation to live up to my expectations; it has been done, though, and I'll explain later. This particular animated version of "Alice in Wonderland" was produced by Jetlag Productions in 1995 and released to DVD in 2002 by Goodtimes Entertainment. I've never been too pleased with the animated versions I've seen of "Alice in Wonderland", not even Walt Disney's 1953 classic, and unfortunately, Jetlag Productions' takes the cake as the worst I've seen so far and one of the studio's weakest titles. Most animated films from Jetlag Productions have a balance between strengths and weaknesses, but sadly, "Alice in Wonderland" fits the category in which weaknesses outnumber its strengths. The film is simplified to appeal to children's tastes, but I think they went overboard, as I doubt children will find the film entertaining enough. The weak storyline moves along ungracefully and slowly, generating a lot of yawns from scene to scene, and the characters are not on screen long enough to be too memorable. Even with its many weaknesses, the film has one or two good points, too.

Based on Lewis Carroll's timeless literary masterpiece, "Alice in Wonderland" follows the adventures of Alice. Her story begins when she is sitting alongside the riverbank with her cat Dinah listening to an uninteresting history lecture from her older sister. Just when she could not be any more tired of listening to passages from a book without pictures, a strange white rabbit with clothes and a pocket watch appears and seems to be in a great hurry. Burning with curiosity, Alice follows the strange creature down its rabbit hole which turns out to be a deep tunnel leading, it seems, to the center of the earth. When she reaches the bottom of the tunnel, Alice finds herself in a brand new world; Wonderland. In this enchanting place, Alice discovers a tiny door leading to the most beautiful garden she had ever seen and thus begins a journey to find this beautiful place. In her journey, Alice stumbles upon many strange creatures, all of which seem to be just plain mad. Alice attends a mad tea party with the March Hare and the Mad Hatter, and plays a silly game of croquet against the fearful Red Queen. When the poor Knave of Hearts is accused of stealing the queen's tarts and taking them quite away, Alice attends his trial and confidently, stands up against the unfair tyrant and her pack of playing card-warriors. Discovering at the same time that the whole enchanting world of Wonderland was just the works of her wild imagination.

Once again, though the story is pretty much the same as with most other adaptations of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland", this version really does lack much of the charm that made others so grand. The film suffers from an artistic crisis; Jetlag Productions films have never been high on quality of background art and animation, but this is them at their worst. Most of the drawn sceneries suffer from poor choice of color, though much of it might be due to an unbalance in the DVD's colors, but still, the coloring is anything but appealing. Then there's the character design; once again, very poor. The protagonist is very badly designed, especially her face. She suffers from that typical eye design seen also in "Jungle Book" (1995). The rest of the characters have too simplistic or awkward a design to be visually likeable. The animation is not much worse than I've come to expect from this studio, but it still seems to be one of the weaker efforts. Voice acting is also a problem here; the characters speak in a way in which it sounds like a kindergarten play, with little emotion and very unrealistically. The same thirty-one voice actors from other Jetlag Productions films are listed in the credits, so of course, that means we're once again listening to the boring same voices from other films from the studio. In fact, seeing Jetlag Productions' films dubbed in other languages usually improves their appeal altogether. One thing I missed in this particular version of "Alice in Wonderland" is the moral; all other versions of the story I have seen resulted in some sort of lesson learned by Alice after her long journey. For example, in Walt Disney's 1953 version, Alice learns that too much curiosity can be a very bad thing and that it often leads to more trouble than one can handle. In the 1988 Burbank Films Australia version, Alice had been bored of reading her book, "The Principals of Logical Calculus" and arrived in Wonderland to search for the beautiful garden, only to wake up and discover the beautiful garden that was her very own, as well as appreciation for anything that was "logical". Finally, in the wonderful 1999 Hallmark version, Alice learns to have confidence in herself, and to enjoy, not fear, the fun of performing . There was nothing of the sort here, other than a few hints that curiosity was not a good leader. On the bright side, there are a few cute sequences, such as the Mad Hatter's drawing scene. The songs are rather nice, especially the first song, "Anything Goes in Wonderland", which opens, and closes, the film nicely with a soft melody and a catchy tune. The second song, "The Caucus Race" plays during one of the most repetitive and completely dumb sequences in the film. Finally, "M is for Me" is played during the Mad Hatter's drawing sequence of things "that start with the letter M"; catchy, but not too great. All things considered, Jetlag Productions' "Alice in Wonderland" may or may not be a hit with the children, but for Lewis Carroll's fans and older viewers, I recommend the other three versions I mentioned, especially the 1999 Hallmark version, which is my favorite film of all time.