Indeed we are. Here's another surprise.



7.
Alice in Wonderland (1951)
Matt ranked it at 13. Shauna ranked it at 10.
OVERALL SCORE: 11.5

Matt: So this movie is 63 years old. Think about that. Back then people didn't have electricity, lived off the land and everyone was called Frank. Out of nowhere a man, we'll call him Dis Knee, had an idea. To take the cave paintings that everyone enjoyed so much and to put them in order very fast. It was called a motion picture. It was a huge success and then there was Dis Knee Land.

The end.

Alice in Wonderland is actually a messed up movie. Nothing makes sense, everything is bonkers and things are often mad. That's why it's amazing. It's off the wall nonsense from start to finish jumping from Random plot to random plot is very enjoyable. One minute you're drinking a million cups of tea, the next you are running away from a deck of cards run by a crazed queen. Nothing makes sense.

It's quirky, random and enjoyable. Very few movies manage to replicate this which is why it's a unique entry to this top 10.




Shauna: In an entry that surprised everyone, I’m sure, we have Alice in Wonderland. Closest agreement in ranking we’ve had so far, which is interesting. Curiouser and curiouser.

I didn’t have much exposure to Alice in Wonderland as a child – this movie or the original tale. Luckily for me, I chose to read the book not too long before I watched this with Matt, which gave me a whole new insight into how good this movie actually is as an adaptation.

As a little bit of background, Alice in Wonderland as a novel is essentially a bunch of individual set pieces that are unrelated to each other, and are generally just utter and complete nonsense from cover to cover. That is pretty much all there is to it. They are wonderful little nonsense set pieces, but nonsense nonetheless. Going back to the 1951 animated feature, they portrayed this entire concept rather well. Moving from piece to piece was about as seamless as it was in the original novel, which is to say you turned a page and suddenly you were somewhere new, which I didn’t have a problem with at all.

The colourful world of Wonderland is fun and weird and wacky, and the individual set pieces they chose to animate were wacky and weird and fun, just like it should be. Characters appeared for their bit and then left and Alice continued on acting like nothing had happened, other than being in a kind of crazy place. Alice adjusted to all the stuff rather well, actually, considering her situation. Ever the straight man, that Alice Liddell.

Anyway, I just really enjoyed it. I really like Wonderland and how they portrayed it. Thinking about it, I don’t really know how they could get it all that wrong!

…oh… Look at you, Disney Alice in Wonderland (2010)… How did you get everything so horribly dreadfully dreadfully horribly wrong?