The movie starts off as several of the Wonderland film adaptations do; with a 'Wizard of Oz' style opening whereby characters from Alice's real life world become the characters of her Wonderland dream. The story actually keeps time to a theme set up in this opening where we have Alice suffering from stage fright. Her journey through Wonderland endows her with the self-confidence needed to not only pull off her real life performance, but to act on her intuition as well. This of course is an added layer of story telling not part of the book. Although purists [rightfully] object to this addition, I didn't find it all that distracting. Alice stumbles into the world of Wonderland. Will she get home? Not if the Queen of Hearts has here way. Be warned! Once you watch the film you will find the contents to be curiouser and curiouser – and you will be tempted to watch it again and again.

R2 Special Collection zum 60. Jubiläum Germany- Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment - No cuts (72:11 PAL).R1 60th Anniversary Edition America- Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment - No cuts (75:12 NTSC). I also loved the darkness of this film and I feel that gave it a truth and honesty about it. Alice being truly scared and learning more about herself through this movie seemed realistic. Where in the 2010 remake it was more of a random and out of place plot. I didn't understand the ending and the point of the story in that remake. Where this one has a beginning middle and end. The start where you see Alice is nervous to sing in front of all the party guests and her mother is guilting her into it. ( That was just mean). She ends up falling into the rabbit hole and along the way she learns to stand up for herself and have a voice. Which in the end comes into play in every way. I know when I was a kid and growing up and I came across this it was very much an important film in my life. I just loved everything about it. The darkness and intrigue and the mystery of Wonderland. What else? A nice bonus with this edition of AIW is the inclusion of the puppy sequence. This is the first Alice I've seen where they reproduced the puppy that Alice runs into upon shrinking herself and escaping from the rabbit's house. Another first is the rendering of the table in the Hall of Doors as 100% glass, as described in the book.

Of all the Alice films made since the first one in 1903 I've never really seen the characters from the book brought to life quite like this. Kudos to Jim Henson's Creature Shop for rendering John Tenniel's drawings as animatronic based Wonderland characters. The deserved their Emmy for this effort.And so the film goes on – accurately depicting each and every lesson that Lewis Carroll has masterfully hidden in his masterwork for the astute child (adult?) to see and learn from for themselves. This is the best original adaptation of Alice in Wonderland out there. I have seen the 2010 version and can say no matter how much CGI you add to that film it doesn't have the emotional conviction the way this one does. Tina Majorino does an amazing job with the role of Alice in this version of the classic we all know and love. I love how they did the characters and how they made them real. They didn't seem silly or over the top in anyway to me. They seemed like people you could see in person at one point or another.