Alice In Wonderland [DVD]

As a fan of the novels and Disney's version, I knew I had to lower my expectations for this title. However, the title was lower than that! Poor animation, mucky colours and thoughtless voice casting made this very hard to watch. I'm just glad I didn't actually buy it muself. However, a friend's daughter liked Alice herself. Why? 'Because she was funny'. I don't like to moan, but this is one for the DVD Dustbin!

This obscure version of Lewis Carroll's classic masterpiece, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was first known to me when I received it as part of a video package that included titles from this producer as well as the Golden Films version of Aladdin. Even though the film was obviously produced cheaply and without much attention to details, the film has always been liked by me, possibly because Alice in Wonderland has always been one of my favorite stories.

This particular version of Alice in Wonderland is pretty much the same as any other in terms of storyline. A little bored Alice follows a white rabbit down a rabbit hole only to find herself lost in a wonderful land of mysterious and odd creatures. At the beginning of her journey through Wonderland, Alice opens a tiny door that leads onto a beautiful and colorful garden which becomes the goal of Alice's searchings. Alice runs high and low in search of this beautiful garden, meeting all kinds of characters, such as the crusty Dutchess, the overly-odd Cheshire Cat, has tea with the Mad Hatter and the March Hare and plays an unusual game of croquet with the wicked Queen of Hearts.

This animated version of Alice in Wonderland is dated 1999 on the back of the case, but its poor image and sound quality make it seem as if made much long ago, which is a shame because if only the sound and picture were properly presented, this would be quite a charming version of Alice for any child to enjoy. Still, children are highly unlikely to pay attention to the presentation quality, but may find it quite hard to understand the unclear voice acting. There's one theme song, that has annoyed other viewers at being repeated numerous times throughout the film, I, however have found this song to be quite sweet and beautifully sung by the young singer. The rest of the music is quite screechy and oddly recorded but still rather pleasant and perfect for this film.

What is quite rare with this kind of DVD is that it would bring any bonus features. Not one of them is very interesting, but still a surprise, the added extras include a choice between two sound options, Dolby Digital 5.1 Stereo or D.T.S. The film claims to have been digitally re-mastered, but this is obviously untrue. There's interactive menus as well, but the two main extras are the author (Lewis Carroll) biographies and an interactive quiz game. The back of the case states that you may win a free price from this quiz game, however, I believe that promotion ended years ago.

I would not recommend this film to adults who seem to enjoy a film version of the classic story, for grown-ups I'll recommend instead either the 1951 Disney version or the 1999 Hallmark TV version, which I thought was the better one. I will however, fully recommend this film for younger children.

o,k, if you are a collector but not really worth it.
a so-so animated version of alice in wonderland that does not seem to follow the usual alice movie and seems a little out of order (i was not aware that alice ate any tarts). though it still does do ok with what it has. the sound is so so and sometimes needs to be relistened to to hear whjat was said. the is NO captioning / subtitle or other language.

a quiz on the disc gives a win prize link ( digitalversatiledisc.com/youwin ) which is no longer good (domain is up for purchase). searching web gives no results what the "prize" was. the dvd says that there were 60 titles on the digitalversatiledisc.com website to find out what there are. the copyright for "digitalversatiledisc.com" is 1999.