Available on Blu-ray Disc (Region B)Czechoslovakia/Switzerland/UK/West Germany 1987 Czech (Colour); Animation/Fantasy/Comedy/Horror (Condor/Channel 4/Hessischer Rundfunk); 86 minutes (PG certificate)Crew includes: Jan Svankmajer (Director/Screenwriter/Production Designer, adapting Novel ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND by Lewis Carroll *** [6/10]); Peter-Christian Fueter (Producer); Keith Griffiths, Michael Havas (Executive Producers); Svatopluk Malý (Cinematographer); Marie Zemanová (Editor)Cast: Kristýna Kohoutová (Alice)A fed-up little girl (Kohoutová) falls asleep in a cluttered room, and dreams that her stuffed rabbit comes to life, which she pursues into a bizarre realm of ludicrous imaginings.A curious, highly inventive "interpretation" of Carroll's story, in which we accompany a human, narrating Alice into a funny, nightmarish and incredible world of stop-motion animation.Several characters and incidents are missing altogether, but while a determinately original take on Alice's dreamland adventures, it is also potentially the most faithful, for its illogical, surrealist approach ensures that the very essence of Carroll's nonsense prose is captured more accurately than the often prettified, fairy tale renderings that we are used to.Blu-ray Extras: Alternative Version, Short Films, Music Videos, Booklet. **½ (5/10)

Yeah ... I don't think I'm as big of a fan of this as many people are. It undeniably has a lot of amazing imagery ... it also has a lot of tiresome rummaging around in drawers and similar tedium. I like it, but if it's the best screen version of "Alice in Wonderland", that's largely because of how abysmally unimaginative and dreary most other versions are.

A loose adaptation of Lewis Carroll's ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND, this otherworldly piece of work marks the first feature-length filmmaking from Czech stop- motion animation master Jan Svankmajer since he threw himself into this line of work in the 1960s. It is live action combines stop-motion, Alice is play by the cherubic Kohoutová, while her smaller version and other characters are all made of puppets (mostly grotesque) and cards ("off with their heads", the Red Heart Queen often commands), and "the wonderland" is set in a neglected building, often Alice stumbles into a room with surrealistic happenings and there is always a desk with a drawer, and whenever Alice tries to open the drawer, she would mechanically pull out the drawer knob first, take a stumble, then use some instrument to open it. The repetition is rather unexciting for the feature-length, the same can be referred to the annoying close-up to Alice's lips whenever she do the voice-over of the lines of herself (sometimes her thoughts) and all the puppet characters, with the obdurate emphasis of mentioning the addresser in the end of each sentence. As much as I admire the fluid technique of the animation and its fantastic imagination of concocting such a surrealistic template, I can not dispel the awareness of some certain degree of frustration and boredom from time to time. Furthermore, it is not a children's film in any sense, the setting is creepy and uncanny, the characters including the white rabbit, the mad hatter, the March hare, the caterpillar, the frog and the fish, are more germane to appear in nightmares than day dreams, their behavior is irrational and repetitive, so is Alice's robotic acting, too amateur to invite viewers being involved profoundly. The recurring visual themes begin to take its toll in the long run, maybe short is a much more appropriate media for Svankmajer's art form, in any case, it is a beguiling novelty with some innovate ideas, plus it must take meticulous elbow grease to pull off such a big project, although I can be hardly enjoy this film, stand in awe of the final product, Svankmajer is a one-of-a-kind virtuoso in this particular tributary, this is a fact no one can contradict and the film is a true eye-opener if judging on its own merits.

I found this film to be one of the most fascinating and beautifully made adaptations of Lewis Carroll's masterpiece: While the Disney version captured perfectly well the humor, joy and lighthearted elements of the "Alice in Wonderland" books, this movie does a great work portraying in a very original manner the other side of the same story, showing how dark and twisted it could be…And yet, this is strangely faithful to the original story (Well, at least to a certain point) The result, in my opinion, was fairly impressive, being one of the best and most memorable works of Jan Švankmajer, combining perfectly well stop-motion animation with live-action, while at the same time it includes many of the recurring motifs in the rest of the movies and shorts directed by this Czech filmmaker.I would recommend this movie to any viewer who wasn't completely satisfied by the Disney version of this same story, since "Alice" is able to show the dark and mature side of what is often considered just an ordinary fairy tale, despite being much more complex than that.9.5/10