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!)

'Alice's Wonderland' isn't wonderful

Alice's Wonderland (1923)
Starring: Virginia Davis and Walt Disney
Director: Walt Disney
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

The night after visiting the studio where Walt Disney (Disney) and his fellow animators give life to cartoon characters, little Alice (Davis) is transported to Cartoonland as she sleeps. Here, she's treated like a superstar by the cartoon animals... except for the savage lions who want to make her their dinner!

"Alice's Wonderland" (1923) was an early effort from Walt Disney. It spawned a series that ran from 1923 through 1927, with some installments produced... although judging from what's offered in this first one it's a little surprising it even spawned one sequel. 

 
Released as part of the "Laugh-o-Gram" anthology series, each episode "Alice" merged live-action footage with animation in a similar way to what Max Fleischer had been doing with his "Out of the Inkwell" series starring Ko-Ko the Clown. Unfortunately, Fleischer's team did a much better job with this sort of thing that Disney and his cohorts were able to do. In fact, at this stage in the history of animation, and even standard filmmaking, Fleischer & Co. were far, FAR out of Disney's league.

Even at its best--when the live action footage dominates over the animated during the film's first few minutes--this film is clumsy and pedestrian when compared to even early "Out of the Inkwell" installments. From the very beginning, Fleischer attempted to seamlessly merge reality and animation, while Disney barely attempts that, instead mostly keeping the animated characters on a page, even if they are able to interact and acknowledge the "real people" beyond their two-dimensional world. There is nothing like the overlapping of animation and live footage that is commonplace in the Fleischer films.

Where "Alice's Wonderland" truly fails, though, is in the animation department. The jokes and sight gags are uninspired, the character designs are lazy, and the animation is so lazy that it makes the film unintentionally creepy: Most of the animated characters have dead, lifeless eyes and faces. The parade scene from which the still illustrating this review was taken becomes unintentionally creepy because no one blinks, no one shifts their heads to look at Alice as she passes by... they just stand there, frozen. In fact, the parade ends up feeling a bit like some sort of time loop, as the elephant-riding Alice passes the same group of onlookers, over and over, as they stand paralyzed. Alice may be oblivious to the horror of the situation, but I wasn't.

A perhaps even bigger problem is that the second half of the film is made up of sequences that go on entirely too long. Even the amusing climactic chase scene--with Alice fleeing or fighting a pack of hungry lions--goes on and on and on for long enough to become tedious.

"Alice's Wonderland" is yet another early effort from Walt Disney that makes me think he might have been far better at spotting, hiring, and managing creative talent than doing the creating himself. It's another of his early films that has moments, but the overall the bad drags down the good.

But don't just take my word for all of that. Take a few minutes to watch the film for yourself. Let us all know in the comments below if you agree or disagree with my take. (Meanwhile, I'll watch a few more entries in this series to see if they get better and more competently executed as time goes by.)