Is today your birthday? No? Well then CONGRATS, that means it’s your UNBIRTHDAY! And for Unbirthdays, there’s a big tea party that never ends. But move quickly or you might not get to drink any tea. For this project, I’m focusing on the story itself, including dialogue, character development, any subplots, how a story presents itself, the speed at which it moves, if it slows down unnecessarily, etc.
Update: In February 2022, I started a video version of the DFP on Tiktok. You can find the video below. Thoughts expressed in the video may be different than what are expressed in the blog post, due to the time difference in posting.
A Brief Summary
Alice struggles to focus on her history lesson (read dutifully by her elder sister) when she and her cat Dinah escape to a flower field. Spotting a well-dressed rabbit, Alice follows him down a rabbit hole and into Wonderland. In her journey to return home, she meets a Dodo bird, meets Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum who tell her a tale with a moral, attends a tea party with the Mad Hatter and the March Hare, and finally is led by the Cheshire Cat to the Queen of Hearts herself. But when Alice makes one too many wrong moves with the Queen, she’ll have to figure her way out or it’s off with her head. Includes lots of Oysters, a lizard named Bill and a singing flower garden.
What works
- Unlike Treasure Island where side action scenes showed more information to the audience, making the audience more aware of the overall situation than Jim Hawkins, Alice in Wonderland kept Alice and the audience (me) on the same level of understanding. Though revealed at the end that this entire adventure was a dream, throughout the film, we find ourselves in a nutty, colorful world of “impassibilities” (impassible because nothing’s impossible, of course) where everything that happens, we understand to just fit the world we’re now in.
- An early scene in Wonderland is a good example of this. Alice is trying to follow the White Rabbit and finds herself stuck in a locked room. Only after either she or the doorknob say something does the next thing happen. At their words a table appears, a drink, a key, a box of cookies, but nothing appears before it’s realized to be needed and just poofs into existence. It had the same feeling of an ‘Escape Room’ where you can’t skip ahead but must follow the steps in order.
- Don’t get me wrong, the ENTIRE film is nuts the moment Alice goes down the Rabbit Hole. However, the level of ‘nut-ness’ actually progresses as the movie goes on, leading to the climatic nightmare escape and Alice waking up.
- The Rabbit Hole/Doorknob
- Barely in Wonderland (though I guess it could be called Limbo), Alice is really calm. She’s talking herself through everything but not in a panicking way, almost admiring this next experience she gets to have. Upon meeting the Doorknob, she continues to give herself advice on following the directions of mysterious bottles and boxes. She does cry when she is extremely large but stops as soon as she is floating in the bottle (“Oh I wish I hadn’t cried so much”) as in she acknowledges that it was not really a normal reaction. The Doorknob is the first character to truly interact with her (the White Rabbit not counting until later because he was late, late for a very important date) and he both helps her and halts her before she floats through the keyhole. Nut Level: 1
- The Ocean/Caucus Race
- Suddenly we’re smack in the middle of the ocean. My best guess? Literally an ocean of tears. She’s just bobbing along when along comes the Dodo Bird, floating on the feet of a Toucan and pushed by (I’m assuming) his first mate, a parrot. Upon reaching the shore, Alice gets a little more frustrated, but that might be more because her hair is wet than because she can’t find the White Rabbit. She does calm down as she and her hair dry (coincidence? I don’t think so) and then chases after the White Rabbit into the woods. Nut Level: 3 1/2
- The Tweedles/The Walrus and the Carpenter
- Next, we meet the Tweedles. Alice really wants to continue following the Rabbit but they convince her to hear a story because she is the most curious child in the world. There’s a greater sense of urgency to follow but the tale of the Walrus and the Carpenter is a good one, with a moral (unspoken but I’m pretty sure it’s about not letting one’s curiosity get the best of them). Alice, of course, says there’s a moral if you’re an oyster and then leaves to continue after the White Rabbit. Nut Level: 7
- The White Rabbit’s House/The Dodo Returns
- Being mistaken for “Mary Ann”, Alice is sent inside the White Rabbit’s house to find his gloves. Eating a cookie (because she didn’t learn the last time), Alice turns into a ‘monster’ with arms and legs stuck out the door and windows. The Dodo comes to help the White Rabbit, first sending poor Bill the Lizard to face Alice (with unfortunate results) and then deciding to burn the house down. Eating a carrot, Alice shrinks even smaller than before. It’s the crazy demo-type day that Chip Gaines might be proud of. Nut Level: 15
- The Flower Garden/The Caterpillar
- Poor Alice, she’s teeny-tiny and stuck in a flower garden. After listening to the flowers sing, the flowers discover that she is in fact NOT a flower. The decision to call her a weed wrecks havoc on Alice as they yell, bark, shove and dump water on her to get her away from the garden. She finds the Caterpillar, but he only really speaks in questions and smoke and possesses a temper that matches hers. After going through 3 size changes (tying the record with her size changes with the Doorknob) and nearly ruined a perfectly good bird’s nest, she gets back to her right size. Nut level: 37
- The Cheshire Cat/The Mad Tea Party
- Coming across the nuttiest (and scariest) character in Wonderland, Alice takes a path that leads her to the Mad Tea Party, a giant table with plenty of seats but only 3 attendees. Celebrating Unbirthdays and never getting a drop of tea, Alice starts to lose her temper yet again. Also, the tea is served in ways that defy all laws of anything and a perfectly good watch is two days slow and “it was an Unbirthday present too”. Nut level: 489
- Lost in the Woods/The Cheshire Cat Returns
- Entering Tulgey Wood, Alice gets lost, surrounded by creatures that blend real-world animals with real-world tools. Alice is directed to a path which gets swept away, leaving her lost and trying to remember the good advice she’s told herself but didn’t listen to. Poor Alice, she’s in the middle of a break-down. But then, the moon rises..oh wait..that’s a creepy smile. The Cheshire Cat returns and he “helps” her find the shortcut to the Queen’s Castle. Nut level: 575 (for the wood creatures and Cheshire, not for Alice’s crying)
- Painting the Roses Red/The Croquet Game
- Alice assists in painting white roses red because the Queen would only have red roses. With a temper that would match Stromboli’s, Alice meets her Majesty, the Queen of Hearts. Ruling over decks of cards, the Queen goes from cold to hot in a flash. There’s a cheating game of croquet and the Cheshire makes yet another appearance. Despite Alice’s attempt to stop him, he humiliates the Queen who wants Alice’s head on the chopping block. Only the meek and tiny king cools her down enough to give Alice a trial. Nut level: 863
- The Courtroom/Escape
- Welcome to the Queen’s (and the King!) court where sentence first, verdict after! With witnesses arriving from the Tea Party, Alice has to relive the madness that was the Mad Hatter and the March Hare. With one simple word (Cat), chaos ensues. Jam is thrown, a crown is smashed and Alice goes through 2 more size changes before running away, a long train of people chasing after her. She’s pulled into a giant cup of tea, re-meeting more characters and runs down a hall of swirling smoke before meeting the Doorknob once again. With his help, she wakes herself up. Nut level: 1348
- The Rabbit Hole/Doorknob
Honorable Mentions
- “But how can one possibly pay attention to a book with no pictures in it?” 40 years later and Gaston would be wondering the same thing…
- “If you think we’re wax, why then you’ll have to pay.” – Tweedle-Dum
- Also, the faces that they give each other when Alice wants to know about the oysters. They knew how to get her to stick around.
- “Start at the beginning.” “And when you come to the end…stop.” -the March Hare and the Mad Hatter during the Mad Tea Party
- “Move down, move down, move down, move down” -the March Hare (the last ‘Move Down’
Side Questions
- What did she see when she looked through the keyhole (the first time)? She says she saw the White Rabbit, but when she goes through the keyhole, it’s an ocean. An ocean I’m not entirely sure existed prior to her tears.
- I’m assuming she couldn’t remember which piece of mushroom made her large and which made her small. Why would she eat them both? How could she forget which piece of mushroom made her large? It’s not like they changed pockets at all…
What I learned from watching this film
- This movie. This movie. It’s a trip to Crazy Town with the hope that what happens in Crazy Town, stays in Crazy town. That being said, there’s so much to learn about setting and how to create an action and reaction between the characters and their environment.
- Alice is a young girl (“a little girl” as she says often), so this world that she finds herself in has familiar markers that she can recognize. As it reveals itself to be all a dream, there are moments from the song she sings earlier (hint: ALSO PART OF THE DREAM) that come to life in Wonderland. The White Rabbit lives in a fancy little house (more of a cottage), he’s dressed in a proper outfit, the flowers sing to her, all things that she had wanted in her world.
- Wonderland is so incredibly detailed. Not only that but it’s the right balance of details between real-world and Wonderland. So while it definitely goes far into Nut Central, there are still enough real-world elements that keep Alice from figuring out she’s dreaming until the very end. I think my favorite real-world tie-in was the White Rabbit’s house. Of course, he would have a garden and a grandfather clock with bunny ears. Of course, he would have his gloves up in his bedroom. Other than him being a rabbit, there’s nothing really about his home that raises a red flag. Until Alice eats a growth cookie, that is. It all works together to create this vibrant, immersive world for Alice to pass the time in.
If you’ve seen Alice in Wonderland, what did you think? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
Rewind to the beginning of the Disney Film Project
Skip back to the previous film with Treasure Island
Fast Forward to the next film with The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men
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