ALICE IN WONDERLAND

1951, Walt Disney Productions

Animation

Rating: G

Approx. 74 mins.

THE STORY:

Bored by the dry history lessons her governess intones, young Alice drifts off into a dreamworld where rabbits in waistcoats worry about deadlines, potions shrink or magnify, and doorknobs talk back. She crawls into a rabbit hole and enters a magical world where nothing is as it seems and everything can be any possible way. She meets all kinds of fantastic characters and has a number of unusual experiences before eventually waking up and returning to the security of the predictable world.  

QUESTIONABLE LANGUAGE:

•  none

VIOLENCE:

• baby oysters are tricked into being eaten-- not shown on screen, but obvious 
• the Queen of Hearts repeatedly threatens to behead people, but it never happens

TEACHING POINTS:

• None: Lewis Carroll was a firm believer that kids got enough moralizing elsewhere, and wanted to produce sheer entertainment. Disney seems to have carried this through.

THE UPSHOT:

It's quite surreal and lacks a coherent narrative, which is a tribute to how close it attempts to stay to the original text. But this also might make it a bit inaccessible to younger kids. The 5 year-old in the room responded to the safe absurdity: nothing really dangerous happens, it's all just a fantastic dream. The grown-ups in the room appreciated the retro-cool and the potential for mindlessness. 

4/5