It's another disappointing trip to Cartoonland...

Alice Gets Stung (1925)
Starring: Virginia Davis

Director: Walt Disney

Rating: Four of Ten Stars

A cat chases a rabbit while bears make music and dance. It just another day in Cartoonland until Alice (Davis) decides to help that cat and then go bear hunting.

The "Alice in Cartoonland" series was an early effort from Walt Disney and a studio of animators. It's similar in concept to Max Fleischer's "Out of the Inkwell" series in that it merges live action footage with animation, but where Fleischer had animated characters invading the Real World, Disney had a young girl have adventures in the animated universe. Sadly, the Disney effort appears to be inferior to the Fleischer films it was modeled after. In fact, the ones I've seen so far are so weak that I am astonished more than fifty were produced and distributed. 

"Alice Gets Stung" is both one of the best entries I've seen in the series so far, as well as one of the worst.

On the plus side, the animation in this installment is very playful and there's some fun and creative use of cartoon physics during the action scenes. Alice also interacts with her environment more than in most of the others in the series I've previously seen, such as picking up and moving a fire hydrant and even getting in on the cartoon physics action (although in a minor, but still quite creative and visually exciting, way). The level of looping and dragging out gags until they stop being funny is also minimal when compared to previous efforts.

On the negative side, the film is little more than a jumble of disconnected visual gags and set pieces. While they are more innovative and wild than in other outings, there needed to  be a little more of a narrative thread tying them together. Then there's the fact that once a story-thread begins to emerge, Alice ends up as the villain in her own series, attacking bears that are doing nothing more malicious than playing music and dancing in the woods. At least, after Alice tries to murder them, one of the bers is able to turn the tables on her... which leads to the event of the film's title. (I can only assume that Walt Disney was traumatized by a dancing bear as a child, because he seems to have a serious hatred for them.)

I know that I am not the audience for the "Alice in Cartoonlands", as I am not a six-year-old in the 1920s, but I am fairly confident that six-year-old me in the 1970s would have strongly disliked Alice. I keep hoping to find timeless, commercial savvy that Disney displayed later on in these early efforts, but so far I'm not seeing it. Life is too short to spend on things I know I'm not going to enjoy, so Alice will get one or two more views before I decide they are best left in the compost heap of cinematic history.

In the meantime, though, you can watch "Alice Gets Stung" by clicking below. You can also tell me if you think I'm being too harsh or have completely missed the point with my review in the comments section. (You can also agree if you like!)