Alice In Wonderland 1999 Where To Watch

[Dion Worles]

TinaMajorino played the lead role of Alice and a number of well-known performers portrayed the eccentric characters whom Alice meets during the course of the story, including Ben Kingsley, Martin Short, Whoopi Goldberg, Peter Ustinov, Christopher Lloyd, Gene Wilder, George Wendt, Robbie Coltrane and Miranda Richardson. In common with most adaptations of the book, it includes scenes and characters from Through the Looking-Glass.

The film was re-released as a special edition DVD on March 2, 2010, no special features were included, however the film was restored to its original speed as prior releases suffered from PAL speed up. A rare behind-the-scenes documentary of the film was released to YouTube in 2019, the 20th anniversary of the film's release.

Alice is unwillingly preparing a presentation of the song "Cherry Ripe" for a garden party. Nagged by her governess (Dilys Laye) and facing stage fright, an audience of strangers and a song she dislikes, Alice runs out of the house and hides in the woods. As clouds fill the sky, an apple falls from the tree and hovers in her face. She then sees the White Rabbit (voiced by Richard Coombs) and follows him down the rabbit hole, landing in Wonderland.

In an attempt to enter a small door and hide in a beautiful garden, Alice shrinks and grows into a giant, floods a room with tears and shrinks to the size of a mouse. She meets Mr Mouse (Ken Dodd) and his avian friends who attend his boring history lecture and participate in a Caucus Race. Alice again encounters the White Rabbit, who directs her to his house. Alice finds a bottle of liquid which makes her grow and traps her in the house. The White Rabbit and his gardeners Pat (Jason Byrne) and Bill (Paddy Joyce) attempt to remove Alice but she shrinks to a tiny size.

Wandering in long grass, she meets Major Caterpillar (Ben Kingsley), who tells her not to be afraid when performing. After he transforms into many butterflies, Alice returns to normal size by eating part of his mushroom. In a nearby manor house she meets the musical Duchess (Elizabeth Spriggs), her baby, her pepper-obsessed, plate-throwing cook (Sheila Hancock) and the Cheshire Cat (Whoopi Goldberg). The baby is left in Alice's care but turns into a pig and she lets him go. The Cheshire Cat advises Alice to visit the Mad Hatter and his friend the March Hare.

Meeting the two and their Dormouse friend at a tea party, Alice is given advice on the fun of performing and how to get around stage fright. The Mad Hatter (Martin Short) leaps onto the table to perform as he previously had at a concert of the wicked Queen of Hearts. Alice leaves when the Mad Hatter and March Hare start to cause havoc and stuff the Dormouse in a teapot.

Alice once again finds the small door and this time manages to enter the garden, which unfortunately turns out to be a labyrinth maze belonging to the Queen of Hearts (Miranda Richardson). The Queen invites her to a bizarre game of croquet, but her love for beheading people annoys Alice. The Cheshire Cat's face appears in the air and is ordered to be executed, but Alice's logic stays the order and everyone applauds her. Alice escapes the croquet game and meets the Gryphon (voiced by Donald Sinden) and Mock Turtle (Gene Wilder). The two sing with Alice, encouraging her and teaching her the Lobster Quadrille dance. Alice then wanders away and opens a colossal book and walks into an illustration of the woods, making her in the woods. She meets the White Knight (Christopher Lloyd) who fights against a Red Knight, who encourages her to be brave when she goes home.

Alice meets some talking flowers: a Tiger-Lily (voiced by Joanna Lumley), the most sensible of all, some roses, who are rude and not too bothered about Alice being lost, and some daisies, who are rascals. Having the flowers help her, Alice walks off and meets Tweedledum and Tweedledee (Robbie Coltrane and George Wendt), who have some antics with her such as telling the story of The Walrus and the Carpenter before getting into a fight. Alice is then chased by clouds and taken by a pair of card soldiers to the royal court, where the Knave of Hearts (Jason Flemyng) is put on trial for apparently stealing the Queen's tarts. Alice is then called to the stand, but she uses some mushroom to grow to great heights. Upon seeing the tarts have been untouched and the trial is pointless, she openly criticises the Queen and King Cedric. The White Rabbit, who is present at the court, reveals he lured Alice into Wonderland to conquer her fears and asks her if she has self-confidence. Upon Alice answering yes, he states, "then you don't need us anymore." She is then sent back home by the same hovering apple and clouds that brought her there.

Awakening back home seconds after the apple fell, Alice courageously sings in front of her parents and their guests (who all resemble the Wonderland characters), but instead of singing "Cherry Ripe", she sings the Lobster Quadrille. The audience, to Alice's delight, all enjoy her performance. Alice spots her cat Dinah in the audience, who is really the Cheshire Cat who grins at her in congratulations.

In December 2018, composer Richard Hartley was interviewed for Tammy Tuckey's "Rattling the Stars" podcast about his work on the film for the 20th anniversary, providing never-before-heard stories.[1]

In 2019, a behind the scenes documentary of the film was released on YouTube, which had originally been broadcast on the Hallmark Channel (then known as Odyssey Network) in 1999 and had not been included on any VHS, DVD, or digital releases of the film.[2]

The original NBC airing averaged a 14.8 household rating and a 22 percent audience share and was watched by 25.34 million viewers, ranking as the 6th highest rated program that week in terms of households and the most watched program that week in terms of total viewers.[3][4][5][6]

David Zurawik gave the film a positive review in The Baltimore Sun, calling it a "grand and magical production" and praising the cast's performances, particularly Majorino and Wilder.[8] Rating the film 2 out of 5 stars, David Parkinson of Radio Times praised the "wondrous Jim Henson puppetry" and the performances of Richardson and Wilder; however, he found the film "still falls short of the cherished images taken from those first readings of Lewis Carroll's classic tales."[9]

Produced by Hallmark Entertainment, directed by Nick Willing and featuring an incredibly stocked All-Star Cast, this Made-for-TV Movie version of Lewis Carroll's classic novel premiered on the NBC on the 28th February 1999. The show was a success, pulling in a viewership of nearly 26 million people, which led it to be the sixth-highest rated program that week in terms of households and the most watched program of the week in terms of total viewers.

In this adaptation, Alice is expected to sing at a garden party hosted by her parents but is showing reluctance due to despising the chosen song for her, and fears singing in front of an audience of strangers. Hiding out in the bushes in the land of her country home, Alice is met with the bewildering sight of an apple breaking from a tree branch and slowly spinning down through the air to meet her at her eye level. This is followed by the appearance of a white rabbit dressed in a waistcoat and shouting he's late. If you are familiar with the story from here, you know where this goes.

Alice ends up in Wonderland, intending to follow the White Rabbit until she opens a door and sees a beautiful garden that she thinks will be a safe haven for her to hide. The problem is, she's too big to fit through the door. Sooner than she thinks, Alice is on a whirlwind of an adventure, where she will meet characters strange, mad and even inspiring.

Alice follows a white rabbit down a rabbit-hole into a whimsical Wonderland, where she meets characters like the delightful Cheshire Cat, the clumsy White Knight, a rude caterpillar, and the hot-tempered Queen of Hearts and can grow ten feet tall or shrink to three inches. But will she ever be able to return home?

I like this version the best out of all versions of Alice in Wonderland. Tina Majorino is rock start as Alice. This version has more action and has better action than both of the Disney versions. This is the version I recommend. If you like the Alice in Wonderland book and want to watch an Alice in Wonderland movie this is going to be your best choice. I think it's more entertaining than the Disney versions. It's longer and has enough time to have good acting and good action. I give this one a higher rating.

I love the two Alice books and quite often I find myself looking through the pages, reading some of my favorite parts.

I think for a TV_version, this film works quite well, it is a treat to watch all those celebrities becoming some of the most famous characters in literature. Strangely though, my favorite sequence is the one with Peter Ustinov and Pete Postlethwaite as the Walrus and the Carpenter, probably the only scene in the movie that does not contain CGI.

So, why only six stars? As in most versions, the makers of the movie have mixed all kinds of elements from "Alice in Wonderland" with "Through the looking glass" (Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum, The Walrus and the Carpenter, The White Knight). It may work, if you really look at the books just as a collection of episodes, but whenever this is done, the makers miss the point of the books. Alice in "Through the looking glass" is quite different from Alice in "Alice in wonderland" and also, there is a completely different composition to the latter book which is explained in the preface and which finds no acknowledgment whatsoever here. I think the makers of this movie again don't understand the books at all and though I enjoy watching these scenes independently from each other, the whole leaves me unsatisfied.

I have gotten used to mixing the Alice stories, Walt Disney has done the same thing and others as well. But what bothers me most about this film it that it turns the whole thing into a story of initiation. Come on.... Alice does not dare to perform a song in front of her parent's guest but after walking through Wonderland she finally does? This is just plain wrong and completely in contrast to the meaning of the books. Why would you want do make sense out of nonsense? The books are meant to portray Victorian stereotypes, make fun of language etc, but not to enrich a child to become more independent and self-assured. Moreover, it does not make sense at all, why Alice should finally be able to sing in front of the others.

All in all, this movie has fine performances and puppets and decent (considering the time it was made and it being made for TV) CGI, is nice to look at but in the end only mediocre TV-entertainment.

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