Alice in Wonderland (1951)

I think this was only my second time ever seeing Alice in Wonderland (1951), so it was like-new to me. What I found was a fun, nonsensical frolic through a dream-like world. The whole plot is driven by Alice's curiosity. There's no reason for her to follow the White Rabbit, and nobody really listens long enough to help her achieve this goal, but this objective drives Alice further and further into the "curiouser and curiouser" world of Wonderland until she realizes she would rather be home where things make sense.

Everything she encounters is a little bit frightening at first, except maybe the door knob.  There are so many odd characters and creatures, and running into them is really what makes up the story: the White Rabbit; the door knob; the dodo; Tweedledee and Tweedledum; the Cheshire Cat; the Mad Hatter, March Hare, and Dormouse; the Caterpillar; a chorus of flowers; a newt who's a chimney sweep; various creatures which combine household items and birds or dogs (the only creatures that didn't seem to fit in, I thought); and of course the card soldiers, hedgehogs, flamingos, and the King and Queen of Hearts. There are probably others I'm forgetting; as I said, meeting strange people and creatures is what drives the plot.

Instead of having a traditional antagonist, Alice is thwarted and emotionally hurt by the obstacles of the world she's in and by the lunatics she meets more than anything. The flowers are mean--along the lines of the elephants in Dumbo (1941)--but only the Queen of Hearts is really vicious. However, despite all her screeches of "Off with her head!" it would hardly be fair to call the queen a real villain, as she only turns up at the end of the story and seems to treat Alice the same as she treats everyone else. As with Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland (2010), the Cheshire Cat is my favorite character from the movie, although the Caterpillar is a close second ("A-whoooooo aaaaare a-youuuuuu?").

I really enjoyed this story the second time around. It may be super weird--and they do use the "standing on your head" gag twice--but overall the music, art, and story are cute and fun.