Another one of Disney’s classic animated masterpieces finally comes to Blu-ray. Disney scored a huge mega hit with the live action version of Alice in Wonderland, so why not bring back their classic animated movie? The new 60th Anniversary Special Edition Blu-ray disc features a gorgeous transfer of the movie. When watching it, it’s hard to believe this movie is so old – other than the fact that it wears its old fashioned values on its sleeve.
It goes without saying that the animation looks as crisp and clean as it did 60 years ago. The colors are rich in detail and you can see the love that went into every brush stroke. I’m not a purist about most things, but I am when it comes to animation and animation movies. I will always prefer and love real old fashioned brush strokes and cell animation to today’s computer animation. As competent and amazing as computer generated animated films from the likes of Pixar, Dreamworks Animation, etc. are, I can never get past how soulless a lot of it looks. Yeah Toy Story 3 looks stunning, but it doesn’t have the “soul” that hand drawn animation has.
I’m the first to admit, the Alice In Wonderland story has never appealed to me. I’m at a certain age and I can safely say that until last year’s bad movie with Johnny Depp and the bad SyFy television movie the only thing I knew about this world was a girl fell through a hole, there’s a talking rabbit and some crazy dude who likes hats. What is it about this story that makes it so “timeless?” It escapes me. There’s nothing wrong with the original Disney Classic, the material just doesn’t appeal to me.
Presentation/Navigation
There’s nothing ground breaking here. It uses standard Blu-ray/DVD Combo packaging. I thought the image of Alice surrounded by the characters from the world makes the image look a bit cluttered. The navigation is pretty simple – for a Disney Blu-ray. Clips from the movie play in the background while the navigation text is all located on the left hand side. No busy flash animation or transitions. The only issue is, the navigation is a bit simpler, but you have to drill down two or three levels to get to anything and the organization of the extras isn’t as straightforward as it should be.
The picture transfer is standard 4:3 as it was originally filmed. You can view the movie in regular mode or “DisneyView.” DisneyView is pretty cool; it adds colorful borders around the side of the movie so that it gives the “illusion” of a full screen picture. Think of it as a digital picture frame. Sometimes this is better than just having two big black bars on either side. I know a lot of purist will probably hate this, so it’s nice that Disney gives users both options.
Extras
Once again, Disney does a great job on the extras. On first blush, I thought they dropped the ball. The extras seem pretty weak. But how can you argue when Disney goes through the effort to create a brand new 1 ½ hour documentary called Through the Keyhole: A Companion’s Guide to Wonderland. It’s really well done and put together.
There are some other minor tidbits like a Pencil Test of Alice Shrinking, some Reference Footage of the real actress who plays Alice recreating the Doorknob scene and some other tidbits.
The Blu-ray also includes the original DVD Bonus features from a few years ago, the highlight being One Hour In Wonderland – a weird Christmas special that combines
Conclusion
Even though I’m not a fan of the Alice in Wonderland story, I think this Blu-ray release treats the property with the care it deserves, without going overboard. It has just the right mix of features to keep you interested and if you are a fan of the movie, the transfer doesn’t disappoint.
Grades
Movie – C
Audio/Video – A
Presentation – B-
Extras – B
Final Overall Grade – B-
EM Review by
Michelle Alexandria
Originally posted 2/06/2011