johnstonjames for all the Lewis Carroll purist who always yowl about how "unfilmable" the 'Alice' books are, this is one of those faithful adaptations that always reminds me of how vacuous that argument always is. yowl all you like you never satisfied puriste. you'll obviously never be satisfied. i grew up on the complete works of Carroll, Snarks and all, and i am more than satisfied with the numerous film and television adaptations that are out there. as a matter of facto, i can't imagine a single literary work that has been as inspiring to the imagination of so many as this book has.this wonderfully faithful, elegant and opulent 1972 film version is one of the most direct and literal adaptations along with the superb Jonny Miller BBC television film and the excellent KCET version with Kate and Dick Burton. along with the other two mentioned this version is so faithful that you really wonder what a so-called "more faithful" version would be like. most of the production design here is based on John Tenniel's famous original illustrations and there is very little dialogue that diverts from the original text. i've found in the past that people who yowl about a better version of 'Alice' are usually talking about some kind of over-produced mega production and have usually not given any of the existing adaptations any thought. the shallow quest for a mega production is the very thing that led everything to the flat and lackluster Tim Burton fiasco in 2011. i sort of liked Tim Burton's mega production, but it was my least favorite of the 'Alice' films and was definitely the least inspired and most brainless. ALL the other films are much better, including a TV animated one by Hanna-Barbera.this 1972 version is widely regarded as the most lavish and faithful adaptation and was also a BAFTA award winner for cinematography (2001's Geoffrey Unsworth) and costume design. it also features a a modest and delightfully tuneful score by 007 composer John Barry. the music score also faithfully brings much of Carroll's poems to music.the only problem i ever have with this version is Michael Jayston playing a virile, potent and somewhat sexy Reverend Dodgson. i mean COME ON! we're talking about the Reverend Dodgson here and not some matinée, cinema heart throb. i've read about and seen pictures of the repressed and uptight Reverend. he twern't no heart throb. he was a ugly little thang. Michael Jayston's portrayal is hardly realistic.aside from that quibble. i love this adaptation dearly. always have since i first saw it as a child in 1972.as for the purist who yowl all the time, keep on yowling like the Duchess's baby, but all that infantile yowling had better not lead to another boring fiasco like the Tim Burton/ Linda Woolverdumb mess up.

dwpollar 1st watched 2/10/2010 - 4 out of 10(Dir-William Sterling): Fair musical adaptation of Lewis Carroll's book about the young girl mentioned in the title and her adventures. This version is a British live production with a few notable British comedians covered in makeup and costumes so you hardly recognize them(especially Dudley Moore but also including Peter Sellers). There a few songs mostly sung by the lead played by Fiona Fullerton and done well for the most part. The downfall of this version, in my opinion, is the amateurish sets and the costumes are similar to a Saturday morning kids show. The songs are fine but nothing very memorable and we really don't get a feeling that Alice has learned anything when it's all over(I guess I'm not sure if this was the author's intention but we see this in the Disney version). Anyway, the movie just doesn't keep us that interested and it's just OK viewing. It would be interesting to read the book now that I've seen a couple versions filmed to see what was included or dumped in each one. This version is viewable but not much else as I've already said, but I was glad I watched it.

Cheese Messiah This version follows the classic story faithfully, if a bit unimaginatively. As the original is itself somewhat loose structurally, it makes any film version inevitably seem rambling. I know of no cinematic version of Alice in Wonderland that completely successfully overcomes this. This 1972 is usual in that respect. The set design is perhaps too closely modelled on the original Alice drawings, and as such, it is colourful and lavish although it looks rather dated and stagy by modern standards. One major drawback (which seems consistent with all the other Alice films) is that the songs are completely forgettable. A very youthful Fiona Fullerton is convincing as Alice, and a fun aspect of the film is to guess the identities of the heavily made-up cast of well-known actors, some of whom are more easily guessable than others.

Ephraim Gadsby A first look at this "Alice in Wonderland" on the small screen makes one think, "Oh, the humanity!" as many of Britain's finest thespians and comics get lost in animal suits. With this big film formatted for television, one loses two-thirds of the movie's gorgeous look; interrupted by commercials, it loses its narrative flow.Viewed in wide-screen (and it's very wide-screen), one sees striking art direction and set design. There is also a sensible flow from one scene to the next (all based on Carroll) that is lost on most television broadcasts because of commercial interruptions.The acting is often delicious. Peter Sellers' demented March hare provokes laughs, as does comic Spike Milligan -- utterly hidden in his Gryphon costume but using one of his best "Goon Show" voices to good effect and stealing scenes with just his eyebrows. Peter Bull is the image of the Duchess.Some of the costumes are tacky. Ralph Richardson, one of England's premier actors, is too obviously a poor man relegated to a caterpillar outfit. Michael Hordern makes his Mock Turtle even more bizarre than Carroll made him (contrast Hordern's M.T. to John Gielgud's wistfully melancholy mock turtle in the '66 Jonathan Miller "Alice"). Dudley Moore delivers his lines well, but his Dormouse suit seems to have come off the rack. Young singer/light comedian, later Phantom of the Opera, Michael Crawford, is unrecognizable as the White Rabbit.Other performances range from the excellent to the adequate. Robert Helpman, who terrified more than one generation of children as the child catcher in "Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang" doesn't come off so effectively as the Mad Hatter (it's too bad Milligan didn't get that part opposite Sellers' wonderfully insane March Hare, and maybe Harry Secombe as the Dormouse for an all-Goon tea party). Frank and Fred Cox are an amusing Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Flora Robson is a fine "Queen of Hearts". And Fiona Fullerton is a radiant and beautiful teen-aged Alice.Then there is the music. The songs are mostly taken from Carroll's text (with a few regrettable exceptions). They actually get better as the show goes along (as with the Lobster Quadrill and the White Rabbit's letter-song) and they're best when they stick to Carroll. Apart from the better songs, the music isn't inspiring. John Barry, who composed some of the best music for the movies ever, drops the ball with mostly sappy and unmemorable music that drags the movie down.What ultimately keeps the movie from being as good as the sum of its parts is that, like Carroll's story, there's just too much Wonderland to go around; and by the time we reach the Gryphon and the Mock Turtle, good though they are in the book and as much life as Milligan and Hordern try to inject into their roles, we're saturated and ready for the story to wrap up.The letter-boxing makes the movie awfully narrow for many televisions, yet tapes and DVDs formatted for the TV screen simply can't do the feature justice.