--- title: "Alice in Wonderland" year: 1951 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/alice-in-wonderland" fi1m_score: 71 critics_score: 60 critics_reviews: 6 published: "2026-09-17T06:06:41.324684+00:00" updated: "2026-09-17T06:06:41.781494+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Alice in Wonderland (1951) Directed by Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson, Hamilton Luske · 1h 15m · MPA G · Animation, Family, Fantasy, Adventure **Fi1m score: 71** · Critics 60 from 6 reviews *In a sentence:* Ed Wynn fills a pocket watch with butter and jam and it is the sanest thing anyone does > Disney’s Alice is a string of bright, well-voiced sketches that never adds up to a story, and never meant to. Ed Wynn’s Hatter and Sterling Holloway’s Cat carry it; the last act tires, but 75 minutes is exactly long enough. ## Synopsis An afternoon on a riverbank. Alice (Kathryn Beaumont) lies in a tree while her sister (Heather Angel) reads aloud from a history book, and wishes for a world of her own where nothing makes sense. A White Rabbit (Bill Thompson) in a waistcoat hurries past, checking his pocket watch and announcing he is late, and Alice follows him down the hole. She falls slowly past lamps and furniture into a hall with a talking Doorknob (Joseph Kearns), drinks from a bottle that shrinks her, eats a biscuit that makes her a giant and cries a flood of tears that carries her out to sea, where a Dodo (Bill Thompson) is running a race nobody can win. She still means to catch the Rabbit and find out what he is late for. ## Review The credits tell you what kind of film this is. Three directors, Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson and Hamilton Luske. Fourteen names under story, one of them Aldous Huxley’s. Two Lewis Carroll books boiled down to 75 minutes, with Tweedledee, Tweedledum and the Walrus fetched over from *Through the Looking-Glass*. Walt Disney has not made a story out of Carroll, because there is no story in Carroll to make. He has made a run of sketches, most of them good and a few of them wonderful, and let the girl in the blue dress walk from one to the next. It opens on a riverbank. Alice’s sister (Heather Angel) reads aloud from a history book while Alice (Kathryn Beaumont) lies in the branches above, wishing for a world where books are all pictures and rabbits live in houses. Beaumont gives her a clear, polite voice with a temper under it, and the film is wise enough to let her be cross. The White Rabbit (Bill Thompson) hurries past with a waistcoat and a watch, Alice follows him down the hole and drifts, her skirt a parachute, past lamps and rocking chairs and a mirror. At the bottom is a Doorknob (Joseph Kearns) who talks, a bottle that shrinks her, a biscuit that grows her, and a flood of her own tears that carries her out to sea. The look is Mary Blair’s, and it is the reason the film has lasted. Colour comes in flat, hard slabs, magenta against teal, mustard against a violet sky, and the backgrounds have almost no depth, so Wonderland is a stage set the size of a page. The talking flowers are the best of it: a rose taller than Alice, pansies with faces, a dandelion with a lion’s head, all of them appalled by her. The Caterpillar (Richard Haydn) blows his vowels in coloured smoke. Oliver Wallace’s music comes in the same spirit, songs that last a minute or less and are thrown away as fast as they start. The unbirthday tune is the only one we could hum an hour later. The voices carry the middle third. Ed Wynn’s Mad Hatter has a laugh that starts before the joke and outlasts it, and Jerry Colonna’s March Hare answers him with a stare and a shout. Sterling Holloway’s Cheshire Cat is the one calm presence, arriving grin first and offering advice that is accurate and no help at all. We laughed out loud at the tea party, and mostly at one thing: the Hatter mending the Rabbit’s watch with butter, jam and tea, pronouncing it the best butter, and Colonna’s Hare settling the matter with a mallet. It is timed like a music-hall turn and Wynn plays it as if he had been doing it for forty years. Then it runs out of tea. Once Alice leaves the party the film has nowhere in particular to be, and Lloyd L. Richardson’s cutting, which had joined sketch to sketch at a brisk clip, starts to look like a list. Alice sits down in a dark wood and cries, and it is the first time she has wanted anything for longer than a scene. Verna Felton’s Queen of Hearts bellows, and bellowing is most of the joke; the croquet game with flamingos and hedgehogs has a lot going on and not much of it lands. By the trial we were tired, and a little impatient with a film that had been so quick on its feet an hour before. The last ten minutes get her home in a rush. Against the studio’s earlier features this is the odd one out. *Snow White* (1937) and [*Pinocchio*](https://film.one/film/pinocchio) (1940) each had one story, one villain and a lesson, and this has none of them and does not want them. Its admirers make a case for that as the point, and we half agree; the film never stops to tell a child how to behave, which is rarer than it should be. But Carroll’s Alice was a girl with an argument in her, and Beaumont’s is mostly a girl with a complaint, and that is why the film flags when the jokes do. It reached British cinemas on 19 October 1951 and carries a U. Watch it on the largest screen you have, with a child if one is available, because the colours are the point. At 75 minutes it asks for almost nothing and gives back a run of scenes you will remember out of order. Do not wait for a plot. The tea party comes about halfway through, and it is the reason to stay. *Fi1m score 71, published 17 September 2026.* ## What the critics say Most critics like the 1951 Disney film, though few love it. The praise settles on how it looks and sounds: the colour, the tuneful songs, the surreal imagery, Mary Blair’s art design and a voice cast in which Ed Wynn and Sterling Holloway are singled out. Several reviewers argue that animation suits Carroll’s characters better than any live-action attempt, and that Disney’s trimming of the book’s leisurely episodes does the material no harm. One notes with approval that the film skips the usual Disney moralising. The reservations are about fidelity and shape. Nearly everyone concedes it strays from Carroll and Tenniel, and Den of Geek finds the narrative fragmented, a string of episodes with no story to hold them. The spread is wide for so small a sample: most reviews sit in the warm-to-good range, but The New Yorker dismisses the film as pale whimsy with shiny tunes that mock the original, and it is the only outright dissenter. ### Reviews we read (6) - **Slant Magazine**, Eric Henderson (80/100, inferred): The critic praises the 1951 Disney adaptation for preserving a sense of childlike wonder and nonsensical fantasy despite simplifying Carroll's text. They highlight its refusal to follow conventional Disney moralizing or patriarchal tropes, crediting its cult appeal to the psychedelic imagery and lack of forced lessons. [Read](https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/alice-in-wonderland/) - **Empire**, Jo Berry (70/100, inferred): The critic argues that Disney's animated adaptation remains the best screen version of Carroll's stories, as a cartoon suits the quirky characters perfectly. It is colourful, fun and surreal, serving as a cute introduction to the books despite not matching them. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/alice-wonderland-review/) - **The New York Times**, Bosley Crowther (70/100, inferred): Disney's version is declared better than the competing Bunin film for entertainment value, with tuneful music, excellent color, and clever episodes like the mad tea party. It is recommended especially for children despite straying from Carroll and Tenniel. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/1951/07/30/archives/the-screen-in-review-disneys-cartoon-adaptation-of-alice-in.html) - **Variety** (70/100, inferred): The critic praises Walt Disney's tightening of the story and enchanting projection of characters through animation and voice work. The deletions of some elements are not missed, and the film is seen as an improvement over the source's leisurely pace. [Read](https://variety.com/1950/film/reviews/alice-in-wonderland-2-1200417014/) - **The New Yorker**, John McCarten (10/100, inferred): Disney dilutes the classic with pale whimsy and shiny tunes unsuited to the literary work, while the competing Bunin version reduces it to a horror story with awful puppets. Both are deemed a dreadful mockery of the original. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1951/08/04/1951-08-04-053-tny-cards-000039736) - **Den of Geek**, Mark Pickavance (3/5): The critic finds the 1951 Disney film’s narrative fragmented and lacking a strong overarching story, though it succeeds in being dynamic and colourful. He singles out Mary Blair’s art design and the voice cast, including Sterling Holloway and Ed Wynn, for particular praise as standout elements that give the film its distinctive feel. [Read](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/alice-in-wonderland-blu-ray-review/) ## Details - **Director:** Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson, Hamilton Luske - **Director:** Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson, Hamilton Luske - **Story:** Aldous Huxley, Dick Kelsey, Tom Oreb, Erdman Penner, William Cottrell, Joe Grant, Bill Peet, Winston Hibler, Ted Sears, Dick Huemer, Joe Rinaldi, Del Connell, Milt Banta, John Walbridge - **Novel:** Lewis Carroll - **Editor:** Lloyd L. Richardson - **Music:** Oliver Wallace - **Producer:** Walt Disney - **Cast:** Kathryn Beaumont as Alice (voice); Ed Wynn as Mad Hatter (voice); Richard Haydn as Caterpillar (voice); Sterling Holloway as Cheshire Cat (voice); Jerry Colonna as March Hare (voice); Verna Felton as Queen of Hearts (voice); J. Pat O'Malley as Walrus / Carpenter / Dee / Dum (voice); Bill Thompson as White Rabbit / Dodo (voice) - **Runtime:** 1h 15m - **Certificate (MPA):** G - **Release (the US):** 14 September 1951 - **Genres:** Animation, Family, Fantasy, Adventure - **Budget:** $3 million - **Box office:** $57 million ## Where to watch in the US - Disney+: streaming, uhd - Amazon Prime Video: rent $3.99, uhd - Amazon Prime Video: buy $14.99, uhd *Checked 2026-09-17.* Also available in: AR, AT, AU, BE, BG, BR, CA, CH, CL, CO, CZ, DE, DK, EC, EE, ES, FI, FR, GB, GR, HK, HR, HU, IE, IN, IS, IT, JP, KR, LT, MX, NL, NO, NZ, PA, PE, PL, PT, RO, RS, SE, SG, SI, TR, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## Awards - Academy Awards 1952: Best Original Musical Score (nominated) ## If you liked this - *Alice* (1988): Jan Švankmajer’s stop-motion Carroll: same book, stuffed rabbit, sawdust and real menace. - *Yellow Submarine* (1968), Fi1m 74: Flat colour, loose plot and a song every few minutes; the Beatles in Blair’s spirit. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/yellow-submarine.md) - *Spirited Away* (2001), Fi1m 92: A girl follows a stranger into a world of rules she must learn fast. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/spirited-away.md) - *Labyrinth* (1986), Fi1m 74: Henson’s puppets and Bowie’s goblin king; a maze that keeps changing its mind. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/labyrinth.md) - *Fantastic Planet* (1973): French animation as strange as the Caterpillar’s smoke, and considerably less friendly. --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. 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