Tomorrow sees the release of Alice in Wonderland on Blu-ray and I must say I couldn’t be more pleased. Always a favorite of mine since childhood, the 1951 version of Alice is the high water mark in adaptations of Lewis Carroll’s novels.
Released in 1951, it took Disney 18 years to get his vision of Alice in Wonderland off the ground and his effort couldn’t have been better spent. The adaptation of the source material is unconventional, the characters are charming, the music is wonderful, and the nonsense is brilliant.
This is a crowning achievement amongst Disney’s animated pantheon.
I’ve seen this film a hundred times, easily as many times as I’ve watched Star Wars, and I was delighted to see the Blu-ray version. It does not disappoint. This film has never looked more crisp and new. In fact, I watched it with my son and he commented that the DVD version we’ve been watching together for years looked like a comic book and now, on Blu-ray, it finally looked like a real movie.
As for bonus features, it contains all the features from the previous DVD releases and some unearthed introductions that Walt Disney had prepared for showing the film on television. Because of the luke-warm critical response to Alice in Wonderland, it wasn’t rereleased in theatres until the mid seventies, instead it was played every few years on television starting in 1954. The introductions Walt Disney filmed for them are an interesting (and always welcome) look back to his television aura.
Everything about this film holds up, and there’s a good reason that it is by far and away my favorite animated Disney film bar none. The voice of Alice is soothing to me like a lullaby and this film is stupendous.