User Reviews

I love the two Alice books and quite often I find myself looking through the pages, reading some of my favorite parts.

I think for a TV_version, this film works quite well, it is a treat to watch all those celebrities becoming some of the most famous characters in literature. Strangely though, my favorite sequence is the one with Peter Ustinov and Pete Postlethwaite as the Walrus and the Carpenter, probably the only scene in the movie that does not contain CGI.

So, why only six stars? As in most versions, the makers of the movie have mixed all kinds of elements from "Alice in Wonderland" with "Through the looking glass" (Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum, The Walrus and the Carpenter, The White Knight). It may work, if you really look at the books just as a collection of episodes, but whenever this is done, the makers miss the point of the books. Alice in "Through the looking glass" is quite different from Alice in "Alice in wonderland" and also, there is a completely different composition to the latter book which is explained in the preface and which finds no acknowledgment whatsoever here. I think the makers of this movie again don't understand the books at all and though I enjoy watching these scenes independently from each other, the whole leaves me unsatisfied.

I have gotten used to mixing the Alice stories, Walt Disney has done the same thing and others as well. But what bothers me most about this film it that it turns the whole thing into a story of initiation. Come on.... Alice does not dare to perform a song in front of her parent's guest but after walking through Wonderland she finally does? This is just plain wrong and completely in contrast to the meaning of the books. Why would you want do make sense out of nonsense? The books are meant to portray Victorian stereotypes, make fun of language etc, but not to enrich a child to become more independent and self-assured. Moreover, it does not make sense at all, why Alice should finally be able to sing in front of the others.

All in all, this movie has fine performances and puppets and decent (considering the time it was made and it being made for TV) CGI, is nice to look at but in the end only mediocre TV-entertainment.

I like this version the best out of all versions of Alice in Wonderland. Tina Majorino is rock start as Alice. This version has more action and has better action than both of the Disney versions. This is the version I recommend. If you like the Alice in Wonderland book and want to watch an Alice in Wonderland movie this is going to be your best choice. I think it's more entertaining than the Disney versions. It's longer and has enough time to have good acting and good action. I give this one a higher rating.

I am not entirely sure whether this version is the best version of the book, as I grew up on the Disney film. The book is a real delight, it is admittedly oddball, but it is charming and visionary with memorable colourful characters. That is the same for Through the Looking Glass, I do prefer Alice in Wonderland as a book, but Through the Looking Glass does have a nice narrative and the characters still have their appeal.

Back on target, this TV version is not bad at all. Actually it is decent. The length is rather excessive though making some scenes drag on a bit, and as sweet as it was the subplot about Alice being asked to sing at a party I had mixed feelings about. While it meant that Alice goes on a sort of journey in the film character-wise, it felt somewhat unnecessary. Plus in terms of performances, while I enjoyed the acting on the whole, Whoopi Goldberg as the Cheshire Cat disappointed me. She has the grin and her costume was wonderful, but she should have had more screen time.

However, there is lots to enjoy here. For a TV movie, the visuals are pretty amazing. The sets are really colourful, the landscapes are vivid, the special effects are fairly impressive and the costumes are visionary. And I found the music surprisingly memorable, quite sweet really. I know people have complained of the screenplay being poor, personally I didn't find that. I enjoyed spotting the quotes lifted from the books and the actors seemed to having fun with it. Some of the added lines didn't quite work as well, but they were entertaining. Likewise with the merging of the two books, I for one didn't find that a problem. The director also does a good job making Wonderland as magical, as odd and as dreamlike as it should be, and some scenes were very well directed, especially the Mock Turtle sequence, the Caccus race, the Hatter's tea party, the Walrus and the Carpenter and of course the courtroom scene.

The acting is also very enjoyable. Like Goldberg, Christopher Lloyd as the White Knight could've done with more screen time, but he does a very good job with what he has. Ben Kingsley is entertaining as Major Caterpillar, even if he did have some of the film's weakest dialogue, he delivers very well. Shiela Hancock, while she has been better, was fun as the Cook, a lot of shouting but hey she was fun. Tina Majorino I had no problem with as Alice, I sometimes find Alice in film adaptations bland but Majorino isn't bland, she is appealing and likable. Peter Ustinov is a perfect Walrus, likewise with Pete Postlethwaite as the Carpenter. Gene Wilder does fine also as the melancholy mock turtle, he started off a tad uncomfortable, no wonder with his costume as they are horrible to wear, but once he gets into the role he starts enjoying himself more. My favourite performances though were Miranda Richardson as a suitably shrill Queen of Hearts, Simon Russell Beale in a amusing turn as the King of Hearts and Martin Short as the somewhat eccentric Mad Hatter. Jason Flemying was also a riot as the Knave of Hearts as were Robbie Coltrane and George Wendt as Tweedledee and Tweedledum.

Overall, flawed but perfectly decent made for TV adaptation. 7/10 Bethany Cox

As you watch the beginning of "Alice in Wonderland", pay close attention to the guests at the tea party. You might notice Martin Short and his companion, a man placing two buns atop his head as if he were, say, a March Hare. Notice also the man flirting with the woman at the end-you could almost call him a scurvy Knave. But enough with the plays on words. This version of "Alice in Wonderland" was exceedingly well done. From the moment Alice falls down the rabbit hole to the moment she catches the apple, we are spellbound by the fantasy the film has woven for us. Part of its appeal is its satirical notions. Consider the "caucus race", where everyone is cheating. Cynics of politics might agree with this. There is also the trial at the end, where the evidence is as insubstantial as a house of cards. One needs to watch the film or read the novel many times to pick up all of the references!

I enjoyed watching Alice's transformation from stage fright child to confident young girl. It was a continuing thread that helped the story attain a greater level of continuity. Yet the most entertaining portions of the film were those with Martin Short, Miranda Richardson, and Gene Wilder, to name a few. They held nothing back, which magnified the absurdities of their characters to the nth degree. Lastly, the featuring of the tea party at the beginning of the film and the end helped tie it together. A well done film.

What could have been a magic Alice using the formula of top Stars in the cameo roles as in the 1933 version, is dulled by excessive length and an unnecessary sub plot, concerning Alice's shyness in performing a song for a family gathering.

Also combining scenes from Through the Looking Glass while pleasant in themselves, extends the running time, and the pedestrian pace of the film. Sure there are some magic moments, and fortunately the designers have called upon Sir John Tenniel's illustrations for their characters, and the dialog when it is from Lewis Carroll's text is happily nonsense. It is bits that are not by Carroll that detract sadly.

It could have been much better, and even Tina Majorino doesn't make an especially attractive Alice. Perhaps re-editing it down to about 90 minutes would make it a winner, but we'll never know. A pity because some of the segments are very good indeed, with guests like Whoopy Goldberg, Martin Short, Ben Kingsley, Miranda Richardson, Peter Ustinov, and Pete Postlethwaite enjoying themselves immensely

While returning with their own brand of special effects and colorful cast of actors and actresses, NBC was not able to match up with their previous movie, Merlin. While incorporating Alice and Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, NBC slightly ruins the original storyline by meshing Wonderland and the Looking Glass by bringing some scenes from the Looking Glass before Wonderland and vice versa, rather than staying with the original story of Wonderland followed by Through the Looking Glass. Additionally, while NBC did one of the best jobs incorporating many (almost all) scenes portrayed in the book, they did leave out some significant ones. All in all, I thought NBC's special effects and use of so many wonderful actors and actresses saved this movie.

My Take: A visually-entertaining made-for-TV effort.

When I watched this movie when I was a kid, I really loved it. And it didn't differ when I grew up. I still love this movie. It's so abundant in ideas and imaginative wonder, also sharing the imagery of Lewis Carroll's classic story.

It stars a very familiar cast. Their's Miranda Richardson (Queen of Hearts), Christopher Lloyd (White Knight), Ben Kingsley (Sgt. Caterpillar), Robbie Coltrane (Ned Tweddledum), Martin Short (Mad Hatter), Gene Wilder (Mock Turtle), Pete Postletwaite (Carpenter), Peter Ustinov (Walrus) and of course, Whoopi Goldberg as the mysterious Cheshire Cat. Tina Majorino is perfect as Alice, with a fine British accent to fit her role. I remember seeing her younger in Kevin Costner's "Waterworld", but she was quite memorable, for me, in this film. The strange creatures and make-up effects are great too, as supplied by the artists at Jim Henson's Creature Shop.

Not the best in a long line of 'Alice' adaptations, but it's curious settings and trippy characters is faithful to the pages of Carroll's classic story.

TV movie rating: ***1/2 out of 5.

The production team that brought us a stunning "Odyssey" and thought-provoking "Gulliver's Travels" misses the boat on this, another in a long line of disappointing adaptations of Lewis Carroll's beloved and revered "Alice" books. Stunning visual effects vividly creating a phantasmagorical dreamworld unfettered by the laws of physics, and some excellent casting, notably Martin Short as the Mad Hatter and Whoopi Goldberg as the Cheshire Cat, cannot compensate for a poor script and a passive Alice, who in this version, escapes to Wonderland because she lacks the self-confidence to sing at her parents' garden-party.

Carroll's Alice is nothing if not confident; she is also obstinate, precocious, and more than willing to argue fiercely with virtually every character she meets. These confrontations between the logical, rational Alice and the nonsensical, irritable denizens of Wonderland are the source of much of the book's humor, which is sadly lacking in this screenplay. The rich wordplay of the book, in which language is indeed literal, and only nonsense makes sense, is reduced to a stream of non-sequiturs. Carroll's book is filled with conversations, why didn't the writers make use of it? Indeed, one wonders if they even read the book at all. In this film, Carroll's feisty Alice is portrayed as an amiable Dorothy Gale, who must learn to believe in herself before she can return home. At three hours, it is a long, tedious journey.

If you are reading this you are probably trying to decide if this 'Alice' adaptation is worth watching or you may have already watched it and are wondering about the reaction of other viewers.

It is the most faithful (to the book) adaptation so far (faint praise as most efforts might as well have been original screenplays) and the sets, special effects, make-up and Muppets are light-years better than what others have tried.

But all is not right with this version of 'Wonderland' so Carroll fans should not get their hopes up too high. The adaptation involves some subtraction and a lot of addition (or as the Mock Turtle would say some 'Ambition and Distraction'). Unfortunately what was added does not begin to compensate for what was left out, it only pads the running length.

They added three scenes from 'Through the Looking Glass'. Stuck between the 'Lobster Quadrille' and the 'Who Stole the Tarts' chapters are: 'Tweedledum and Tweedledee', 'The Walrus and The Carpenter', and 'It's My Own Invention' with the White Knight. So the original story takes a not very entertaining detour-although the Walrus-Carpenter bits are fun and it is interesting to see a pre-Hagrid Robbie Coltrane as Tweedledum. Fortunately they group the three scenes together and it is not as disruptive as placing them separately at different points in the story.

Historically, the model for the characters are the illustrations that Carroll commissioned John Tenniel to carve on wood blocks. Although Carroll based the personality of his title character on ten-year-old brunette Alice Liddell, Tenniel (with Carroll's concurrence) used another model and gave the illustrated Alice her features and her long blonde hair. Although the movie generally deferred to Tenniel's illustrations, they made a critical error in casting Tina Majorino as Alice. She was 13-14 during the filming and looks ludicrous in the role. She was also quite homely at that age and you are thankful that the director used mostly wide shots so you don't have her face filling the screen. Thankfully her acting is so flat that she does not call much attention to herself. But the overall effect would have been so much better if they had used a younger actress (could they have made it three years earlier and used a 10-11 year-old Kiera Knightley).

The movie works in spite of a poor Alice, in large part because of the other major deviation from the Tenniel look. That would be casting Miranda Richardson as the Queen of Hearts. Instead of a fat and ugly queen we get a delicately beautiful one, and a hauntingly over-the-top performance. But it works because the performance is consistent with Carroll's idea of the queen as: 'a sort of embodiment of ungovernable passion-a blind and aimless Fury'.

And in her surreal make-up you can't take your eyes off Richardson (you literally focus on her face and see nothing else that is in the frame). Her performance was so inspired that she has been playing fairy tale queens ever since.

All the Muppet characters are excellent but for some reason they made Bill the Lizard a man instead of a muppet lizard. Did the producer owe someone a favor? Bill's scene at the Rabbits's House is the third best in the movie; only the croquet match and the trial are better.

And they messed with Carroll's dialogue for no useful purpose or discernible logic. For example they kept all the 'Mock Turtle's' puns, which are hard to follow even in print, while deleting some of the best lines from Alice's scene with the 'Cheshire Cat'; and the tea-party dialogue (and editing) is a shambles. You can't always tell when an original line was omitted but you can tell when something was added by the hack they hired to do the adaptation-all are stupid and some so modern that they are like hearing an off-key note on a flute.

Carroll's dialogue and Alice's thoughts are really the essence of the story.

Someday a director will shoot this thing with mega-reaction shots of Alice (played by a pleasing looking 'young' actress) and with voiceovers of her thoughts-then we will have something that really communicates Alice's curiosity, courage, kindness, intelligence, dignity, and sense of justice. Most important is to communicate her simple wonder (the only wonder about Majorino is how she got the role). The reader was meant to identify with these qualities but only Disney's Alice effectively exhibited them. It's sad when it is easier to identify with the book and with a cartoon Alice than with any of the actresses who have played the role.

Although some part of each chapter is included (Down the Rabbit-Hole, The Pool of Tears, The Caucus-Race, Little Bill, Advice from a Caterpillar, Pig and Pepper, A Mad Tea-Party, The Queen's Croquet-Ground, The Mock Turtle's Story, The Lobster Quadrille, Who Stole the Tarts, and Alice's Evidence), the bookend pieces of the story where Alice is not dreaming are missing. Instead there is a 'Wizard of Oz' kind of scene with the actors out of costume, playing guests at a garden party. This is done entirely to tie in with the writer's annoying artless addition of a preachy "the show must go on" theme which works to deflate each scene in which it is inserted.

This is the only unforgivable change to the story. Wonderland was not a process of self-discovery or personal development, it was a gift to the real Alice (and to future children) and should always end with the thoughts of Alice's older sister after hearing the details of the dream: 'Lastly, she pictured to herself how this same little sister of hers would, in the after-time, be herself a grown woman, and how she would keep, through all the years, the simple and loving heart of her childhood; and how she would gather about her other little children, and make their eyes bright and eager with many a strange tale, perhaps even with the dream of Wonderland of long ago; and how she would feel with all their simple sorrows, and find a pleasure in all their simple joys, remembering her own child-life, and the happy summer days'. This is Carroll telling us why he made up the story.

Bottom line it is the best of the Alice films, a little too long but still worth watching-especially for the Miranda Richardson scenes.

I adore the original novels "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass", but this straight-to-TV movie just didn't work for me. Rather than just simply go through Wonderland and enjoy the ride, we have to have a rather contrived moral added on, as well as all these messages encouraging self-esteem. Often, certain scenes drag on for what seems like forever; there's none of the trademark irreverence that the books have. My advice: If you like the books, and don't want to be bogged down, stick to the Disney version. This one is just not true to the spirit of "Alice in Wonderland".

Yeah, maybe it's got its faults (Looking Glass scenes added in inexplicably, whatever), but by God this is the trippiest film ever made! Hours and hours of madness! It's like you're in a dream that takes control of you. The grass and the trees are so green, the colours are so amazingly vivid, the camerawork is so - melty? - and everything just flows together in the weirdest, most unreal way. So enjoyable. Everything is happy and crazy, just like Lewis Carroll intended it to be. Live a little, just like Alice! Dive into it! I ended up imagining I was Alice and walking in and out of these magical places for hours. What a druggy film - the caterpillar, a thousand references, sentences mangled and regurgitated as inspired poetry, rainbow colours, hundreds of characters, the list goes on.

I love this film! Watch it! Lock yourself away with it!

This is a good movie, it's eye massaging and quite amusing, but it lacked a certain kind of charisma that could of made it better. And some of the acting was pretty pitiful, especialy on the behalf of Miranda Richardson, who was just plain annoying. And some of the parts were miscast, such as whoever played Alice was certainly too old for the part. But except for that this movie is great especially for babysitting.

Let's start with the good things.

Nice special effects.

Gene Wilder. Martin Short. Whoopi Goldberg (who I don't normally care for). Ben Kingsley.

Most of the rodents.

The Walrus and the Carpenter.

Now the bad things.

The most annoying Queen of Hearts possible.

Story revisionism. Hollywood just does not understand that it is not necessary to take a piece of classic English literature and make changes. Adding a dull plot framework and mixing up scenes does not make it better or more hip to audiences. It does show disrespect to the original authors and the intelligence of the viewer. It didn't work for Demi Moore in The Scarlet Letter and it doesn't work here.

Tedium. 3 hours was about 45 minutes too long for this story to be told. I was falling asleep around 9:30 actually, after Martin Short made his appearance...luckily I managed to stay awake for Gene Wilder's excellent portrayal of the Mock Turtle.

This was nowhere nearly as good as Merlin was...at least that story is always ready for a modicum of change whenever it is told. Alice in Wonderland has enough "wonder" in it that change is never necessary. If you want to see it I would recommend the 1931 star-studded version or the 1951 movie with Carol Marsh. Even the Disney travesty was better than this one.

Alice's adventures in Wonderland have always been easy to visualize, thanks to Tenniel's classic illustrations; but they have been difficult to realize. With computer technology at the state it's at at the turn of the twenty-first century, for the first time Tenniel can come to life in a way that doesn't look like animation.

This is the best looking "Alice" ever. The backgrounds are consistently excellent. The passage from one episode to the other is suitably dreamlike. The computer-animated characters are superb.

The cast is variable. Tina Majorina was a revelation as Alice. I had to check imdb to make sure she wasn't just someone like Reese Witherspoon, an older actress able to look ten years younger. Her performance was exquisite, even better than Fiona Fullerton's 1972 Alice.

Martin Short was good as the Mad Hatter (everyone has a favorite Mad Hatter from days past, and mine was Robert Helpmann from 1972, who also played the child-catcher in "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang"). All the royalty were good. Problems in the cast were Gene Wilder; it might've been his most understated performance since his droll turn as Willie Wonka, but good as he was, he was nevertheless out of place and looked ridiculous and uncomfortable in his costume. Too, though Whoopi Goldberg wasn't bad as the Cheshire cat, the point of her performance was to show Whoopi Goldberg as the Cheshire cat rather than the cat itself.

The "Looking Glass" intrusions weren't out of place. A miniseries doing "Wonderland" one night and "Looking Glass" the next might've been nice, but the best elements were taken from "LG" and the results don't look patched in. The cameos, again, are variable. Robbie Coltrane is an actor too little used and it's good to see him anywhere; and though I might've preferred to see him in a dual role, he worked well with George Wendt as Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Christopher Lloyd was perfectly cast as the White Knight, but the White Knight got short shrift and was hardly worth sticking in at all, other than -- once more -- to say, "Look, we got Christopher Lloyd in a thankless role!". "The Walrus and the Carpenter" was not at all distracting -- and with Peters Ustinov and Postlethwait one would almost wish for a whole movie just about them.

The problems, however, do keep it from being the authoritative "Alice". For one thing, someone thought it would be clever to add lines. In most filmed novels this isn't so bad, since the dialogue in books serves a different purpose than the dialogue in movies. But Carroll's dialogue is so precise he might've been writing a play; and it's so well known that any extraneous line stands out like re-writings in "Hamlet". One gets the idea that the writers thought they were as clever as Carroll, and proved that the most notable thing about them was their collective ego.

This led to particular difficulties with the caterpillar. Ben Kingsley was a good choice for the role and -- like everyone else in the movie -- was very good. But his part seemed altered enough to make one suspicious of the writers' intentions. The framing sequence wasn't bad (again, perhaps a whole movie with that cast in non-Wonderland parts would be wonderful), not as bad as Carroll purists would say, but was unnecessarily preachy, as if the story had to have a moral at the end.

A number of roles in the "Alice" books should, when performed, have human performers: The Mad Hatter, the King and Queen and Jack of Hearts, the Duchess, Tweeledum and --dee, the White Knight, et. al. Some, since we have the technology, should be done by computer graphics, with famous voices, if need be. Star-studded "Alice" vehicles have appeared in the past: the top-heavy 1985 Natalie Gregory "Alice", for instance, where a famous actor's face had to be seen in every role; and the notable 1972 Fiona Fullerton bomb, where many of Britain's finest actors (including Peter Sellers and Ralph Richardson) made complete fools of themselves.

Overall, this is the best Alice ever made (including Disney's). It has dreadful moments where famous actors are shoehorned into roles just to say they're there. It has peculiar elements from "Looking Glass" mixed in at odd angles, but such as they are they aren't terrible. And it has a beautifully talented Alice. For those who aren't dogmatic about their Carroll, this is the one to see if you're looking for an "Alice" to pass an afternoon. And children, who don't know any better than we opinionated adults, will be delighted.

I wouldn't recommend this version, but I wouldn't say I hate it either. I guess it was just mediocre. I guess the good technically outweighed the bad. The reason I saw this was because it was the longest film version of "Alice In Wonderland". It was weird, because I was expecting this big epic movie. Of course, the Tim Burton movie version and its sequel didn't do it very well. I think this is probably better than those. It seems to capture the spirit of the book more. I really should get around to reading the book.

I believe I've seen every movie version of it now and I can easily say the Disney version is the best one. One fault with this movie was how it was, well, too long. It's not a complicated story and it just seems to go on too long. I guess that might be justified in adapting a book, but other versions have done it better. The puppets are pretty good. I am really freaked out by Whoopi Goldberg as the Cheshire cat. She looks really scary looking and that's actually probably the worst thing about the movie! Still, it's great to see such a cast of talented actors. I found out this was Gene Wilder's last movie and may he rest in peace. **1/2

The special effects, performances and Muppetry were terrific. But some of the best Lewis Carroll dialog was left out, and in its place was a lot of moralizing and pedantry that seemed out of place and distracting. The whole story was framed in a Wizard-of-Oz-like lesson, which was at best unnecessary. If the producers had only been true to the original books, this production would have been outstanding.

Lewis Carroll is a difficult author to adapt satisfactorily to the screen. Worse yet, most versions try to add some sort of lesson to the story that was never there to begin with. This, too uses a version that simply doesn't work. Alice does not want to have to sing "Cheery Ripe" so the whole film becomes about the importance of performing for an audience. That fails to really hold the film together. Despite this, this is probably the best-looking version of the two books yet. It does neither what the Children's Theatre Company did in 1982, and try to exactly mimic Tenniel's illustrations, nor that of the Harry Harris production, in which the actors had to be recognizable so they wore simple costumes with pig ears or rabbit ears, etc. Here there is a mix of puppetry and mere suggestion. Many of the minor anthropomorphics simply bear resemblance to whatever animal they were supposed to be, such as there was the use (again) of an all-star cast. It frequently makes fun of the fact that many of the cast do not speak in an English accent, though the American actor playing Alice does. The film, however, has beautiful cinematography and visionary effects. The early sequence in the library seems like the Halmis are trying to out-Gulliver their adaptation of Book III of Gulliver's Travels. The extreme visuals begin with the giant metronome at the beginning and carry all sorts of wonderful metaphor. Odd jump cuts and strange reflections don't look like goofs, but contribute to weirdness. A storm like _The Neverending Story_'s Nothing forces her to move on in her dream world to escape. The sped-up photography for the White Rabbit seems a nod to _El Gatto con Botas_, and of course, it's tied together like MGM's version of _The Wizard of Oz_. Like all films of these books, it has good elements and poorly handled elements, and certainly there is no definitive version, but this is one of the more interesting ones.

.......after watching this. OMFG it was horrible. I felt like watching a cross between Rocko's modern life and teletubbies. The effects were HORRIBLE the Acting was HORRIBLE and every thing about the movie was just HORRIBLE!!!!!! As we all know the plot is about a stupid god-ugly girl who sees someone who looks a WHOLE LOT like a teletubbie in a rabbit suit. There was the worst effects ever, like a rat turning into a man, a stupid ugly queen who kept saying "off with there heads" every other breath. I couldn't stand the movie, and worst of all, noticed that I OWN it. I found it in my video collection, and this very second as I'm writing this I'm lighting a fire to burn it. Please, do me a great big favor and stick with Disney's masterpiece. STAY AWAY FROM THIS PIECE OF CRAP!!

It's brilliant, all the characters are beautiful and you will never forget them, once you'll see the movie. Miranda Richardson has made an excellent Queen, she's just adorable when she plays hysterical, and I'm upset that my English it's not enough developed, so I could tell you more about it. And Alice is at the right age and look to be perfect, naive and willing to learn but not to be pushed too hard into it, I will associate her face and looks with Lewis Carroll's Alice forever. The images in the movie, it's a complete fairy tale, but exiting enough for adult's too. If you forget about the childhood and the your playground this movie will remind you the days when every one of us could be an Alice in Wonderland .I can draw a million pictures from this movie, it's full of frames which you just had to frame it and put it onto your wall, and obtain a perfect painting

It's very good but I know the books too well to accept all the changes. I was really hoping for what amounts to a literal interpretation of the books.

I have a big problem with the combining of both stories. Disney did it and I was hoping this one wouldn't. When you mix the two, both stories are diluted. "Through the Looking Glass" is a sequel both written and set a number of years after "Alice in Wonderland". The feel of each is quite different.

I really wish the characters had said exactly what was written in the books. They were written in Victorian England and the style is a bit dated, but completely understandable. Lewis Carroll could have been writing screenplays.

The cast is superb. No disappointments there. Highlights are Gene Wilder as the Mock Turtle, Christopher Lloyd, perfect as the White Knight, Martin Short as the Mad Hatter and George Wendt and Robbie Coltrane as Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

The thing I really couldn't stand was the attempt to string all the experiences together with a storyline about Alice performing in front of family members. In Lewis Carroll's own opinion, the stories are pure nonsense, so to try to make sense of them is pointless.

I hope that someone finally makes the literal interpretation of each book that I want, with two separate movies. Each book is short, so the film-maker could spend the length of the movie faithfully recreating them.

The story will be familiar to most. Dreading a singing recital at her parents' lavish home, Alice falls into a strange world in pursuit of a large White Rabbit. The talented child actor Tina Majorino (Corrina, Corrina, Napolian Dynamite) plays Alice with all the good graces but mostly wanders through strange, hallucinogenic journeys that take her to strange places, has her shrink and then grow very large, and leads her to meet all sorts of surreal characters...

Carroll's tale of whimsical, illogical adventures is a field day for designers, the costumes and makeup are extremely well done, and the special effects are of the usual high standard you would expect from Jim Henson's Creature Shop. But this production is all dressed up without anywhere worthwhile to go. Influenced by Time Bandits and Labyrinth, the film has a splendid array of effects, many dealing with multiple perspectives...

The highlights are Whoopi Goldberg as the Cheshire Cat, a seamless mix of cat and comic. Martin Short as the Mad Hatter. And Mirandra Richardson as the Queen of Hearts, who has put a memorable, if not piercing, personal stamp on the line, "Off with his head". She must say it sixty times during the movie...

The show is not for all tastes, particularly if your idea of Alice in Wonderland is solidly fixed upon Disney's very different if unjustly maligned 1951 animated feature. If you're in the right frame of mind, however, Miller's Alice works wonderfully well….