Walt Disney's Alice in Wonderland is in a category all of its own. Disney's spectacular vision and range is showcased in his 13th animated feature. With a little help from the Lewis Carroll series for which it was adapted from, this film's surrealism makes for a completely unique entry in the Disney pantheon. It's like the black sheep. To this day, they haven't made another one like it.
The story isn't one in the linear sense, but more of a compendium of unrelated series of events. But they all lead to a common goal.
Alice, herself, has some radical ideals when it comes to the world around her, and faces hostility from the adults in her life. But she learns her imagination is mild in comparison to the oddities of Wonderland. She ventures off to this magical world, only to discover she isn't very welcome. She has a terrible time and no one wants her to be there. And at moments, she finds herself questioning the silliness of the realm, appropriating her mindset to that of her closed-minded mother back home.
The depth of Alice is deeper than most realize. It's subtle, but her attitude is brilliant commentary on contrasting our own independent philosophies with those that we're raised on.
Surprisingly, the film is not as dated as you would think. Some of the humor holds up well compared to today's standards.
Considering the very short runtime, the songs are in abundance and create a high ratio to the non-singing scenes. And naturally, there are one or two weaker tunes, but most of them are ear-worm classics.
At 75 minutes, we spend enough time in Wonderland to warrant a complete story. Or collection of events. Alice in Wonderland is meant to be episodic. And it's very dark and deranged at times, too. While many people find that those things make the movie harder to warm up to, it's actually part of what makes it one of my favorite Disney films from the Walt era. An underrated piece of cinema.
Twizard Rating: 95
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The Jungle Book is one of those movies that we seem to remember in glimpses. We know the musical numbers and all the characters, but unless we've seen it as an adult, we can't quite remember exactly what happens.
But we know it's iconic. We know it's a Disney classic. However, this film may have benefitted from being a tad bit longer. There are too many characters we'd love to see more of and so many chances to build up the depths of our leads.
Although I do like this movie a great deal for nostalgia's sake, I wouldn't constitute it as one of Disney's best. The songs are top notch, and the characters are memorable, but it's missing a lot of heart compared to the studio's gems of the same era.
When Mowgli leaves his wolf family at the beginning of the film, there is no heartfelt goodbye. These are the creatures who raised him, and he barely bats an eye as Bagheera leads him on his way to the "man village" to escape the tiger, Shere Khan, who's trying to kill him. And without giving anything away, there are also a couple of key scenes towards the end that should have given us a little more sentiment.
Which leads me to the voice of Mowgli. The kid playing him has no feel or emotion. It sounds as though he's simply reading the lines (or having them read to him) straight off the paper. It's our main character, and his voice lacks any true conviction.
Granted, this was released in 1967, a year that marks, for many, the beginning of Disney's "dark period". It's still a beloved movie, and rightfully so. It's filled with some iconic scenes. The one with King Louie, for example. It's so good, you wish you had been treated with just a few more glimpses of the antihero.
It's the darker, more twisted, tone that drives this film the most between the catchy musical sequences. It encompasses the jungle-feel very precisely, and transcends through from Rudyard Kipling's original source material, despite Walt trying to prevent it. Everywhere Mowgli turns, there's someone out to kill him.
I know it sounds like I'm berating this film a lot, but I actually love The Jungle Book. It's one that I watched often as a kid and one that still makes me smile as I watch it as an adult. Luckily, this film won't face many new critics as mostly everyone has seen it by the time they are old enough to care. That's one of the beautiful things about these old epitomes of animation.
Twizard Rating: 90
The future. That's all this movie is about. How we see the future, anyway. Whether it's right or wrong (usually wrong), we have some sort of an idea. In the 1960s our culture saw the future as nothing that we could ever imagine. Everything was right with the world and we had flying cars--always flying cars. Now, we see the future as much more grim. The polar icecaps melt and the air isn't breathable. We are obsessed with dystopian images. I mean, look at our movies and literature nowadays. But what Tomorrowland wants us to know is that if we believe it, it will more or less happen.
This film is very smart--smarter than most of its audience will be able to tell. It seems pretty black and white, but it's not.
In intertwines two people (George Clooney and Britt Robertson) from two opposing generation's stories and juxtaposes them. Clooney plays adult Frank, but for most of the first quarter of the movie we see Frank as a boy at the 1964 World's Fair in New York. Then we meet modern-day Casey (Robertson), who is a teenage girl obsessed with space and full of hope.
We get fantastic visuals of this mysterious place called "Tomorrowland"--which I won't spoil for anyone. And we finally get a refreshing look at the future from The Jetsons or Back to the Future that we haven't seen in film in awhile.
The first half of the movie plays out as more of a mystery--a really really fun one. We're always feeling like we're playing catch-up.
While many critics thought that the ending was a disappointment, I would have to disagree. Sure we're left with more of a message than a wowing twist, but it's a message that is worth a lot of weight.
There's nothing really bad I can say about Tomorrowland. The narrative may be a bit uneven, but I think it's necessary to convey that story at hand.
Maybe I was just so enamored by the breathtaking visuals, or maybe I was giddy about the refreshingly non-formulaic sci-fi adventure, but either way, those aren't bad qualities for a movie to have.
Twizard Rating: 96
