Alice in Wonderland (1981) User Reviews

A good sledgehammer strike of a cartoon...

[AndreiPavlov · 10/10 · 24 August 2007]

...right against the glossy lollipop of usual Disney animation. Don't get me wrong - I enjoy quite a few glossy Disney works (cf. one of my comments dedicated to "Darkwing Duck").

Pale, insane, dark, surreal, uncouth, crude, but artistically wonderful. Every single voice delivered goes from a talented actor or actress. Every piece of music played and song performed catches attention and does not leave it at ease. If you are accustomed to smooth colourful mermaid-like TV serial adventures, stay far away from this one. An unprepared brain could get damaged by this harsh art.

Alisa is a daring, clever, not very cute (she is no "Britney Spears" or "Barbie" type), but definitely interesting, and very lonely character. She can stand up for herself and she is not a cry-baby - that's for sure. I cannot say I like her, but I watch her animated adventures with a kind of awe.

The two, known to me, Russian DVD releases include both the titles: "Alisa v Strane Chudes" (1981) and "Alisa v Zazerkale" (1982). One of the releases contains mono sound only but that's alright - it becomes to the bleak colour palette of the production perfectly.

As to me personally, I prefer to watch it in almost black-and-white with a very little hint of blue and with the selected EAX advanced sound effects. A fine example of weird intoxicating escapism.

Quite possibly, the best animated version of Mr Lewis Carroll's novel.

10 out of 10. Thank you for attention.

Subjectively unappealing

[Horst_In_Translation · 4/10 · 13 November 2017]

"Alisa v strane chudes" is a half-hour short film from 1981, so this one is already over 35 years old. And maybe, even if you aren't fluent in Russian, then you already guessed correctly from the word "Alisa" that this is indeed another version of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, another animated one. This one is perhaps the most known approach from the Soviet Union on the tale and as a consequence it could very well be the most known career effort for both director Efrem Pruzhanskiy and writer Yevgeni Zagdansky. I must admit that part of my dislike here stems from subjective reasons, namely that I am just not as big of a fan of the base material as most of the others and as a consequence I did not like the watch here too much. The Queen is maybe the only slightly memorable character, but everybody else did almost nothing for me and this includes Alice too whose looks aren't half as fine as they seem on the picture here on IMDb. Overall, the animation style felt rather distracting for me. Voice acting was okay and the soundtrack was decent too, especially in the moments when they simply used very famous tunes. But as a whole the forgettable side dominates and as a consequence I give this one a thumbs-down. If you enjoyed it more than I did though, you can check out the slightly longer sequel from one year later "Alisa v Zazerkale" / "Alice in the Land in the Other Side of the Mirror". I will certainly do so myself and I hope it's better than this one here which I suggest you might wanna skip.