ANI-MOVIES, *Alice In Wonderland

While Tim Burton's rather shameless breakdancing ripoff of The Looking Glass Wars and American McGee's Alice shook up the box office, you cannot deny the classic visual ecstacy of the 1951 Disney animated movie. I'm really suprised that Disney didn't bother giving the live-action sequal/reboot a different title, at least to seperate it from the original. Although the more recent film seemed like Disney was just rehashing their Return To Oz premise but with Lewis Carroll's work. But, it is still impossible not to enjoy their classic first shot at it.

Taking place in England(probably in the late-19th Century), young Alice is bored out her mind listening to her sister trying to teach her history. She then follows a slightly anthropomorphic White Rabbit down a hole, but instead of ending up in Bugs Bunny's place, she enters a "dimension of sight and sound". After having emotional problems with a chatty doorknob, she washes up on the shores of Wonderland. She's then thrust into a caucas race, forced into a dream sequence by pushy twins, wrecks the Rabbit's house, and gets pestered by pushy flowers, all while having some serious height issues. Fortunately, a poetic caterpillar gives her some good mushrooms(?), and Alice manages to stabilize her size. The enigmatic Cheshire Cat then leads her to the highlight of the movie, the Mad Tea Party(you can't not love the Doormouse freaking out!). After a little more wandering around amongst the bizarre forest animals, Alice does something that most Disney heroines do, and realizes that her own world was better after all, and decides to try and get home. The Cheshire Cat shows up again and leads her to the loudmouthed Queen of Hearts who has a serious decaptiation fetish. Instead of getting her head chopped off, Alice is given the weirdest trial outside of Judge Judy. She then proceeds into the craziest Benny Hill-styled chase in animated film history, and wakes up because the whole thing was just a dream(or was it?).

For the lucky 13th of Disney's full-length cartoon movies, this broke alot of molds for them. First off, it was actually a meltdown of more than one book, while being mostly from the Alice In Wonderland book, there are segments from Through The Looking Glass too, but they manage to bring it together in a coherent way, which is suprising considering the source material. The other great aspect of it was their use of allowing the visual elements and music tell most of the story. It was to date their most colorful and lively animated movie to be released, only succeeded by Sleeping Beauty. While it isn't out to ram some overly-Christian morals down your children's throats like most Disney films, it remains as fun family feature, and one of the best cartoons to get totally stoned to!