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Summary: Vegas does Alice in Wonderland
Review: After reading the previous glowing reviews, I was excited to get this video, but after watching, was disappointed. It does stick close to the storyline, the sets are elaborate, and Natalie Gregory, the girl who played Alice is a real pro......but the made-for-TV soundtrack, (reminiscent of Fantasy Island et. al.,) the splashy show-biz song and dance numbers and the countless 'wink-wink' cameos by Big Stars, (who probably had to take time out from their regular Vegas engagements to appear,) turned a haunting, eerie and beautiful story into a bit of a cheez-fest. Having said that, however, I must admit I was thoroughly entertained by Sammy Davis, Jr as the caterpillar - one of the most bizarre moments in entertainment history, to be sure.
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Summary: A World of Nothing but Nonsense
Review: Wonderland is nothing but a world filled with nonsense. I realize that may be the author's intention, but it left me searching for meaning where there was none. Everyone is mad in wonderland, or they wouldn't be there. It's hard to call it an adventure, since nothing really happens. The characters are all mean, and at times unlikable. I get the pun, I can see the satire, but I just didn't find it funny. I have two daughter's who are 4 and 5, and I tried reading it to them as well to see if it might be a generational thing, but since most of the book is a play on words, they did not understand it, and they did not like it any better. I'm sorry. I'll admit Carroll has quite an imagination, and created quite a unique world, but he didn't do anything with it. I feel bad for having seen Disney's classic animation adaptation of this story first, and for hoping to gain some added insight by reading the actual book, but there is nothing more here to be gained. It did make me appreciate the job Disney did in adapting it to a movie however. I believe he (Disney) captured the images perfectly.
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Summary: Excellent Children's Movie
Review: This movie is difficult to find in video stores for rent or purchase, which is a shame to kids who should be able to see it in it's best version ( Lewis Carol's 1985 ). This is an all time classic since i was a little girl 15 years ago. They never should have stopped reproducing the videos for both movies. These live versions are 3 times better than any of the other ones that have come out. ...
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Summary: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Review: This was a remarkable book. Truly amazing. It has inspiried so many people, and even those in my acting school who didn't see much more than the Disney movie were moved by it. And to those who say it was confusing and full of nonesense, I have an explanation. The story was made up by Carroll on a boat ride to Alice Liddell and her other two sisters. Alice wanted to hear a story with lots of nonesense, and that's what Carroll did. If you still do not get it, I can't put it any more clearly. If you need help understanding the books, buy volumes such as the Annotated Alice and other books that explain Carroll's work. Hopefully you'll enjoy it as much as I did.
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Summary: Fabulous!
Review: This is definitely the BEST version of the Alica In Wonderland movies. I say this because it combines an all-star cast. Such stars include Carol Channing, Ringo Starr, John Stamos, Scott Baio, Sammy Davis Jr., Beau Bridges, Lloyd Bridges, Red Buttons, Steve Allen, Merv Griffin and believe me the list goes on! I remember I was a child when this movie came out and at 21 I still enjoy watching this movie (along with its second part "Alice Through The Looking Glass"). The other thing I think is so timeless with this movie is its soundtrack. The songs are original, jazzy, and infectious. I just wish I knew where I coul get the soundtrack. It seems as though it was never released. This movie is timeless and a true classic.
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Summary: Addicting
Review: The famous clasic kept me reading for hours. It is one book that I get the same reaction everytime I read it. It is great for all ages. The first time I read it, I was 12 and I have read it several times after that, it is not very surprising. It is a hundred maby even a thousand times better than the movie.
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Summary: Quite charming, really
Review: I must confess I had never read the account of Alice's adventures before. As an adult, though, I found the two books to be quite charming and fun to read. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland is the much more enjoyable tale of the two, perhaps because so much of it was already familiar to me as a part of popular culture. Through the Looking Glass seemed to me to be much more contrived and less magical. I found myself trying to puzzle out hidden messages and motifs in the latter work, while I basically just read the Wonderland story for pure enjoyment. The latter tale also seemed to fall apart at the seams as it began to approach its conclusion. Without rereading the books, I have trouble seeing all of the complex and satirical things mentioned by academic types (such as a critique of Victorian society and contemporary educational methods), nor does the whole chess game motif make complete sense to me, although the workings of the game apparently pleased the mathematician in Carroll's alter-ego enough that he attempts to explain it at the start of Through the Looking Glass. It was a treat to see the original illustrations of John Tenniel interspersed throughout both stories, despite the fact that Alice appears a good bit more sullen than I envision her in my own mind. It was also good to be formally introduced to such well-known entities as the Cheshire Cat, although Humpty Dumpty certainly comes across as a rather taciturn figure. For those of you who love puns, Lewis Carroll offers you a gold mine of them, although I doubt that many children will actually understand very many of them until they reach an age in which they will probably reject a reading of Carroll as "baby stuff." I'm no expert on children's literature (or on children, for that matter), but the story of Alice's adventures would seem to offer a free ticket to an enticing fantasy world for youngsters and a delightfully quaint vacation spot for adult readers.
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Summary: Alice's Adventures and the quality of dreams.
Review: "Alice in Wonderland" was required reading for one of my present classes, if this had not been the case, I'm certain I would not have finished it for the sake of enjoyment. I admit this story has good points as well as bad; it would not have survived nearly so long if it did not. In my opinion, however, the good did not outweigh the bad.
One of the strong points of this story is familiarity; the vast majority of us have had some experience with this book, usually as a child; we have heard the story, read a condensed version or seen a film or television portrayal. We have seen little girls dress up like Alice on Halloween; and who doesn't personally know The White Rabbit, The Cheshire Cat or the Queen of Hearts? Perhaps there's a degree of nostalgia that comes from revisiting these old childhood friends.
In addition to being familiar, this story also has the charming quality of feeling as if it had been pulled directly out of a child's imagination. By that, I mean it doesn't follow the rules that have been set up by adults, either scientific or social. So, if you fall down a well shaft in Wonderland, not only are you likely to live, you may also be able to examine the trinkets placed on the shelves, perhaps even get in a few winks as you fall.
In this book, nothing is what it seems (unless you are familiar enough with the story); a baby may mutate into a pig and run off snorting; a couple of card soldiers may spend an afternoon painting white roses red in order to avoid losing their heads, this is all perfectly normal in Wonderland. Perhaps it is even this strange quality that has made this story so popular. It wasn't enough for me however, to make up for what it lacks. This book didn't move along purposefully enough for me to enjoy it or care what happened next. It also had a strange dream-like quality and I don't mean surreal or day-dreamy. It was dream-like because it was a jumble of random scenes that didn't really interrelate. We often fill in the gaps when we retell our dreams so in that they make sense to us and frankly so that they are worth telling to someone else. This is the impression that I had of Alice in Wonderland; unstructured and random. The only real goal of the main character was to follow the white rabbit and even that failed as a motive fifty percent of the time. Alice is simply moved haphazardly through a sequence of strange encounters and then wakes up. Because of this, I didn't feel anticipation, I didn't hope for anything, and I didn't have any sense of closure when the story ended; which are the elements that I feel make a story worth reading.
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Summary: Maybe we should be more like Alice...
Review: When I was assigned Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass to read for my Victorian Literature class, I was excited. Even though I had heard Alice's Adventures in Wonderland referred to countless times throughout my youth, I had never read the story or seen the movie. I had never heard of Through the Looking Glass, but while reading, I realized that many people who think they are talking about AAIW are actually referring to TTLG. The two texts seem to be conflated in a way that makes them indistinguishable from each other. It is for this reason that I enjoyed reading this edition of the texts. There is only a page separating the two stories, which allows the reader to easily make the transition between them. This small separation also allows the reader to recognize the undeniable connection between the texts and to understand why many people combine them in their minds.
AAIW is about a young girl named Alice whose boring day with her sister is interrupted when a white rabbit runs by her saying, "Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!" Alice's curiosity is aroused, but surprisingly not to a great degree. This is the first hint to the reader that Alice is not an average child, as she seems to believe that a talking rabbit is quite normal. She does become intrigued, though, when the rabbit produces a clock from his pocket, so she follows it down its hole and enters a world of wonder. I loved the story from this point on. It is filled with such unbelievable creatures and situations, but Carroll's writing style made me want to believe in a world that could be filled with so much magic and splendor. There was never a dull moment in the story, and each page was filled with more excitement. I will offer a warning, though. This story is not for those who like a neatly packaged plotline. It is written in a somewhat discontinuous nature and seems to follow some sort of dream logic where there are no rules. However, I enjoyed the nonsensical pattern. Without it, a dimension of the story would be lost. It offers some insight into the mind of a young, adventurous, fearless girl, and Carroll seems to be challenging his readers to be more like Alice.
The second text in this book, TTLG, is again a story about Alice. In this adventure, Alice travels through a wondrous world on the other side of her looking glass. As in AAIW, Alice again encounters absurd creatures, such as live chess pieces and talking flowers. The land she travels through is an oversized chessboard, which gives this story a more structured plot than AAIW. The chess theme provides Alice with sense of what she must accomplish in the looking- glass world, and it provides the reader with a sense of direction throughout the story. Alice's goal is to become a chess queen, so the reader knows that when she becomes queen, the story will be over. However, just because the story has some structure does not mean that it is not just as wild and marvelous as its predecessor. I enjoyed all of the characters. They seem to have an endless supply of advice that people in the 21st century can still learn from. My favorite example is when the Red Queen says, "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!" Maybe what Carroll is suggesting is that if we read more nonsensical, unbelievable stories like his, we won't be so afraid to be adventurous and fearless like Alice; so that the next time a white rabbit runs by us, we might just see where it leads us.
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Summary: A must for reading out loud.
Review: Find some children anywhere you can and read this book to them! I say this for your pleasure at least as much as theirs. Reading it out loud will be one of the delightful experiences of your life. Did I say "reading?" I should have said "performing," because you will not be able to resist acting it out. Let yourself go--you will be a child again, yet still appreciate the book's adult insights. There is so much to say about this classic. It captures the psychology of a girl on the verge of growing up; it is full of jokes that appear absurd, but are fiendishly clever; it somehow avoids anything old-fashioned or politically incorrect; and absolutely all the characters are loveable, no matter how hard they try not to be. Carroll was an unhappy, aging man, yet he understood children to a spooky degree. While I smiled mildly at some of the humor, my children rolled around on the floor laughing. Here is an interesting phenomenon: When I read it as a child, I didn't particularly warm to it. When my children tried to read it on their own, they gave up. But the group experience of reading it out loud was a joy for all. Do I need to describe the plot? Could I if I tried? Alice may or may not be dreaming when she follows a rabbit down into his hole and enters a world where the simplest actions are strange and complicated. In her effort to explore this world and ultimately return home, nothing fits right, nothing seems to follow through properly, and no one she meets is sane. Alice, though a little girl, is given plenty of opportunities to be the rational, mature, assertive person of action. Everyone I discuss this book with, and I mean everyone, shudders and raises the issue of Carroll's alleged improprieties. They are invisible in the book, but to put your mind at ease, you may want to check out the judicious biography by Morton N. Cohen. The particular edition of Alice in Wonderland that I am reviewing, published by Grosset, is especially pleasant for reading out loud, with comfortable print, and Tenniel's essential illustrations.
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