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The online film magazine Combustible Celluloid offers new movie reviews, DVD reviews, film reviews, actor interviews, actress interviews, director interviews, film books and all things cinema related for the thoughtful and passionate. Online for ten years! Over 3000 reviews!

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Alice in Wonderland (1951)

Rating: 3 Stars (out of 4)

Cats and Caterpillars

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Disney's animated musical adaptation of Lewis Carroll's classic is enjoyable and contains a few twisted touches and slanted visuals, but it's no match for the severe darkness and allegory-laden original. The songs in this film are among Disney's least inspired, and they tend to drag things to a halt. Even the pot-smoking caterpillar is reduced to a grade-school teacher who recites the alphabet.

Disney's 2011 Blu-Ray release includes a few new hi-def features, plus an interactive game. It also inculdes all the old DVD features, like a classic Mickey Mouse cartoon, Thru the Mirror and a deleted Cheshire Cat musical number, neither of which is terribly exciting. Disney himself pops up introducing the original television broadcasts, plus lots of other making-of stuff and games for kids.

Buy DVD | Buy Blu-Ray | iTunes Download

Trailer | Poster | Soundtrack | Book

With: Kathryn Beaumont, Ed Wynn, Richard Haydn, Sterling Holloway, Jerry Colonna, Verna Felton, J. Pat O'Malley, Bill Thompson, Heather Angel, Joseph Kearns, Larry Grey, Queenie Leonard, Dink Trout, Doris Lloyd, James MacDonald, Don Barclay, The Mellomen (Bill Lee, Thurl Ravenscroft, Max Smith, Bob Hamlin)
Written by: Winston Hibler, Ted Sears, Bill Peet, Erdman Penner, Joe Rinaldi, Milt Banta, William Cottrell, Dick Kelsey, Joe Grant, Dick Huemer, Del Connell, Tom Oreb, John Walbridge, based on novels by Lewis Carroll
Directed by: Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson, Hamilton Luske
MPAA Rating: G
Running Time: 75 minutes
Date: Janary 30, 2004