Director: William Sterling
Cast: Fiona Fullerton, Peter Sellers, Dudley Moore, Ralph Richardson

I've mentioned on this website several times that although I have had a life-long love for motion pictures, I've had other interests in my life as well. One of these interests has been reading. Though I confess that nowadays that my rate of reading new books isn't all that great, when I was a child I was a big reader. There are so many authors that I read as a child whose work was directed at children, including but not limited to Donald J. Sobol, Gordon Korman, Roald Dahl, John D. Fitzgerald, and Norman Mailer. Just seeing if you were paying attention for that last author. Anyway, while I freely admit I was a really big reader, I don't like to freely admit that when I was a child, I didn't dip into children's literature that was considered "classic". I did read some Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle, The Coral Island by R. M. Ballantyne, Bambi by Felix Salten, Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe, and especially enjoyed King Solomon's Mines by H. Rider Haggard, since it described things like people being ripped apart by elephants, or getting decapitated. And... well, that's about it. Although I certainly heard of classic children's books like Tom Sawyer, Treasure Island, and The Wind In The Willows, for some reason I never picked them up. I can't come up with a good excuse for that. However, I do have an excuse for one classic children's book I never read, and that was Lewis Carrol's Alice's Adventures In Wonderland. Why didn't I read it? Well, it was chiefly because the protagonist of the book was a young girl. Being a full-blooded young boy at the time, I certainly didn't want to give the impression to anyone around me (or myself) that I was interested in girly things. Eww, gross, even if the book would have promised Alice decapitating the various kooks she comes across.

Actually, when years later when I became an adult, I did finally read Alice's Adventures In Wonderland. Though the only reason was that in university, I was writing a paper for a film class that required me to reference the novel, a paper that was about Disney films. When I read the novel, though other details about it have vanished from my mind, I do remember thinking that its presentation suggested that a film adaptation would be very difficult for anyone. For starters, the novel is in an episodic format, which brings such challenges ranging from having a strong central character to having to come up with a short but compelling narrative over and over until the end of the movie. In fact, I had learned some of those lessons when I had seen Disney's 1951 feature length animated adaptation of the novel on TV years ago. (Yes, even though as a child I thought the novel would be too girly for me, I did have a penchant for color cartoons.) I remember being confused upon watching it as to why Tweedledee and Tweedledum (who were actually introduced in the sequel novel, Through The Looking-Glass) suddenly appeared at the climax of the movie without appearing earlier. (The reason was the movie was chopped down to fit an hour-long time slot.) But I also remember that Alice in this animated adaptation was a flat character, more of a device to move the limited narrative rather than she actually influencing the narrative. And the narrative was basically one crazy short vignette after another, which got exhausting and somewhat boring after another. There were certainly some positive attributes, like colorful animation, funny gags, and catchy songs. But on the whole, I did find this animated adaptation not as memorable as many other Disney animated movies.

Ward Kimball, the directing animator of the movie, later suggested that the messy structure of the movie was in part due to the movie being handled by several chief directors and animation directors, with each director trying to stand out from the others. Walt Disney himself felt that the end results lacked a kind of magical yet human spirit that audiences could connect with and remember for a long time afterwards. These and other failings of the movie explain why it was released after a few years to television instead of Disney milking it out with periodic re-releases like most of their other animated movies. However, Disney did eventually start milking the property, with their 2010 live action Alice In Wonderland movie, which was such a big hit that six years later they made Alice Through The Looking Glass, which didn't fare as well at the box office. I didn't watch either movie, mainly because by then the Disney company came across in my eyes as being too corporate, too desperate to make money, and lacking the innovation Walt Disney put in his movies when he was alive. I still don't want to watch either movie, but when I came across the 1972 live-action Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, I decided to give it a go. It wasn't Disney, it was a British production while the three Disney movies were considered "too American" for a British story by many critics, and it had an intriguing British cast. There are some pretty prominent British actors who play the specific roles originated by Carroll. There is Peter Sellers (The Pink Panther) playing The March Hare, Spike Milligan (The Last Remake Of Beau Geste) playing The Gryphon, Dudley Moore (Arthur) playing The Dormouse, Ralph Richardson (Dragonslayer) playing The Caterpillar, Roy Kinnear (The Last Remake Of Beau Geste) playing The Cheshire Cat, and Michael Crawford (Condorman) playing The White Rabbit - among others!

Since you almost certainly have some handle on the two Alice books, even if you haven't actually read them, I will not bother giving a plot synopsis, and I will dive right into this cinematic adaptation. But just before doing that, I feel I should let readers know is that the 1970s were a tough time for the British film industry. Costs were rising, and funding for British films of any genre was getting harder to raise. Knowing this, I was wondering how the visual presentation of Alice's Adventures In Wonderland would be. Well, let me put it this way - imagine your high school drama class was given somewhat more of a budget for props and set dressing, but they still had to stage the various scenes in the film on the stage at their school auditorium, and no extra money for additional and better lighting, as well as other niceties. That's how the movie looks and feels most of the time. To be fair, the print of the film I watched on the streaming service I used was an extremely shoddy one, which definitely put somewhat of a damper over everything. Also, here and there are a few scenes with some decent special effects, one being an eye-catching and effective use of forced perspective when Alice starts growing inside the White Rabbit's house. Other than brief moments like those, viewers (including kids) will find the movie feels very stagebound, has moments of reduced lighting that make it impossible to tell what's happening, and a frequent cheap sensation over everything. With the limitations on hand, it seems strange that writer/director William Sterling - who had no experience with theatrical movies before (and after) this movie - was chosen to direct such a project that practically screams for expert skill.

Instead, the movie more often than not is simply lifeless. This movie needed attributes like imagination, awe, mystery, and uneasiness. Instead, Alice's Adventures In Wonderland is slow, depressing, boring, and often feels like Sterling and any of the other people behind the camera were not having any fun. Even when Alice falls down the rabbit hole, there is a "so what?" feeling. The closest to a heartbeat the movie generates is (slightly) speeding up footage in one scene to "hilarious" effect, or editing sequences so haphazardly that while the audience will feel something, that "something" is just plain confusion. Without a firm hand guiding everyone to maximum effect, the cast is simply left to their own devices. As Alice, Fiona Fullerton (The Human Factor) looks too old to be playing what's supposed to be a young girl who can still regard the fantastic with awe. Her monologues come across as forced, her sometimes gee-whiz attitude seems built from contempt, but most of the time she comes across in the blandest way you can imagine. As for the aforementioned famous people in the cast, despite their comic and/or dramatic talents, they are unable to do very much. Ralph Richardson does the best by having his Caterpillar character being low key yet seemingly knowing much more than he lets on. Dudley Moore and Peter Sellers on the other hand seemingly are unable to be the least bit funny. While watching the movie, I wondered why they and most of the other Wonderland characters were so restrained. The theory I eventually came up with was this: The somewhat better players (like Richardson, or Flora Robson as the Queen of Hearts) got to act without having makeup on their faces. The other actors have stiff makeup on their faces that not only looks extremely grotesque, it covers all of their faces so you can't recognize the actors at all. Also, you can't tell at all what the actors' faces are expressing; I imagine Moore, Sellers, and the other unlucky cast members looking at themselves in the mirror after the makeup application and thinking, "How the hell can I fully show the particular eccentric side of my character?"

The result are performances that are at times unbelievably restrained for actors we have found extremely funny in other movies. There's another reason why I think the cast seemingly just didn't care and wanted to get out of there as soon as possible. The script for Alice's Adventures In Wonderland is woefully lacking. Certainly, pretty much all of the characters are written poorly - Alice is introduced and suddenly finds herself in Wonderland before even the first five minutes of the movie have passed. But the script also suffers from the fact that writer/director Sterling didn't seem to understand the potential trap of making a live action movie that's essentially a series of vignettes. With the book, Lewis Carroll was able to get into the heads of the characters, as well as add details difficult or impossible to show in live action. The 1951 Walt Disney adaptation had the crutch of using hand drawn animation and art design that was eye-catching enough to always keep you looking on with interest. But in this particular telling, the narrative flow keeps starting and resetting, so there isn't a consistent feeling. The movie moves from one vignette to another in less speed than a blink of an eye, and that's confusing at times. The movie does have one addition to the classic story that was also done in the 1951 version, musical numbers. The songs use original text from Carroll (with additional lyrics by Don Black), and music by the legendary John Barry (Monte Walsh). However, not only do almost all of the songs sound alike, that one particular song is not very good at all, from the uncatchy beats and rhythms to the tone-deaf vocals of the aforementioned bored and uncomfortable cast. I must admit that towards the end of Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, I myself was extremely bored and uncomfortable, so much so that it was hard for me to keep my hands off my nearby smartphone to quickly whip up some sort of easy and interesting material to digest. Even fans of any of the actors in this movie would find this movie excruciating to get through. Although I haven't seen it, I still feel confident in recommending instead the 1976 live action movie version of this classic story, since I've heard it at least has the novelty of soft-core porn throughout. Or hard-core porn, depending on which version you get.

(Posted October 9, 2026)