Fairy tales are a staple in modern culture in different ways and forms.
Some skeletons of popular stories are used to morph into unique creations and adaptations; given that a lot of these stories fall under the public domain, they can be adapted to unique audiences for different takes.
However, out of all stories, none have had a more cultural impact than Lewis Carrol’s “Alice in Wonderland.”
A tale of a young girl following a white rabbit to this strange world through a rabbit hole has been a staple in modern storytelling for years.
It continues to age nicely as more stories come out with Alice’s adventures skeleton.
However, does that mean all of these are good? Heck no.
Since these stories aren’t copyrighted, that means these tales can be used at studio’s disposals, usually to cash in on Disney films.
And this adaptation is no exception.
But it’s different in it’s own way.
It’s actually really mysterious. So mysterious in fact, that it spawned a Creepypasta from it. That shows how strange and creepy this movie is.
And that is the Alice in Wonderland adaptation by Cinematronic.
Now, if you were like me originally, you’d think; “Huh, there’s NO way this movie is that bad.”
Oh, it’s that bad, in fact, it’s much worse!
So, strap yourselves in I suppose, this is gonna be a deeper rabbit hole than I thought.
Because there’s nothing more scary than a scarily bad movie!
And if you, too, want to suffer through this movie alongside me, it’s free on Youtube and you don’t have to worry about wasting $15-$25 dollars on this filth!
So, let us set the scene of this thing.
Skipping over the strange opening involving a bunch of stock images from Google and a poorly animated frog, we get to introducing the characters.
And they look like demons.
If you’ve happened to suffer through this movie, you’d notice the animation looking like something a kindergartener would make in Microsoft Paint.
And it looks demonic.
Something of note here is that this movie isn’t actually “voice acted,” let alone scripted.
Rather, Cinematronic stole a recording of a radio play from 1948.
Yes, the 40’s. It’s THAT old.
And it definitely shows.
Another interesting thing about this is a strange animation error within the only beginning bits of the film- a goof where Alice’s mouth clips right out of her body.
But this is only one animation error, in a film of millions of them.
After this strange interaction with her poorly animated sister, Alice dozes off and sees the white rabbit in his poorly animated glory, running around and then jumps in the rabbit hole, which is just a brown hole in the ground.
As Alice follows the poorly animated… thing down the hole in the ground, she falls.
And goes on a tangent about where she could be headed, and proceeds to walk onto different maps for no story reason at all.
We then get a barrage of Google Images, from her supposed cat “Dinah” and the Cheshire Cat eating a bat. (He’ll come later in the story, don’t worry.)
She then lands and notices the door to “the garden” which Alice remarks is locked (without even checking the door in the animation).
Now she engages in the infamous ‘shrink-and-grow scene.’
She inhales the teapot (which is supposed to be a bottle of the supposed shrink drink) and then eats the cake that’s somehow on the ground after realizing she left the key on the table.
A major point in this movie, or, rather the recording, is that Alice is a complete idiot.
She does a lot of things for absolutely no reason, and solves them with as equal as much sense.
By that, I mean no sense at all.
There could've been something wrong in the shortened script, but they obviously didn’t proofread it because they completely dumbed down Alice here.
So Alice begins to sob exactly seven tears.
Why seven? We’ll never know.
So, when she goes to chase the rabbit again, she complains about having to “swim” across her sea of tears, even though there were barely ten and they weren’t even that big.
Also, another animation error.
When Alice starts to slip, the camera shows a bit of the background while trying to do a shaky cam effect.
So yeah, another not-so good look.
Then, Alice finds a mouse that looks like a pile of feces (not joking on this one) and follows it into the end of Alice’s “tear river.”
So the feces rat shows Alice to a race with a messed up looking pelican and… whatever the other thing is.
However, it just ends up to be a jumping competition that only proves Alice can somehow fly, and she gets proclaimed the winner by just jumping and slightly hovering.
She then scares everyone by mentioning her cat, and meets up with the white rabbit again, and gets told to go to his house.
There goes another scene where she begins “growing.”
And by growing, I mean just having a zoomed up face and her poorly animated limbs going places that realistically shouldn’t.
(I.E.: one of her stick legs going up the chimney and her stick hand through a window, somehow surviving).
When the white rabbit finally comes to his house, he’s greeted by Alice’s (somehow) surviving body “bursting” out of the house. So, he calls his friends to help solve the problem.
And here goes the biggest problem with this movie, the character design.
Looking at everyone here, it all looks like complete trash. Everyone here just looks awful. And this was made by a team of people from an actual studio, who put time and effort into this.
Well, heavy quotes there in “effort.”
So they try throwing rocks at the bratty Alice that turns into cakes, and she shrinks to her “normal” size again.
“Three inches high again” as Alice says in the film.
So she ventures off again and runs into the caterpillar that likes to smoke.
They then engage in something I didn’t expect from the film.
A music number.
And then right after that strange musical fiasco, Alice begins complaining about being small, despite being grateful for being small in the white rabbit’s house.
The caterpillar is quite upset, and snaps and says that being three inches is good.
After that, Alice then ventures to a home with the worst perspective shot ever, and gets halted by two cards- that are literally just jpegs with bad stick arms.
Literally everyone in this film has really bad stick arms.
So after talking to the jpeg cards, Alice notes that the house the jpegs are guarding is the Duchess’s house.
And what’s going on inside is a complete train wreck.
I’m going to give a few seconds for you to figure out what is wrong with this shot in the movie.
Go on. I’ll wait.
So after getting complaints that the mean-spirited looking Duchess is having problems with her pig baby, (a baby that looks like a pig, not a baby pig. I can understand how that’s confusing) Alice takes it outside-
Wait- it’s another musical number.
Yes, another one. I have a hunch these are gonna be a really bad recurring thing in this already monstrosity of a film.
Also, another thing is that here, Alice in the recording isn’t singing, but the movie Alice is “lip-synched” to sing along, even though her voice actress isn’t in the recording.
Getting back on track here, after that really bad song, Alice takes the baby outside and it turns into a pig.
From here, I’d be completely confused and yelling that it doesn’t make any lick of sense- but it happened in the book, so I can’t really judge it.
What I can judge is that they didn’t bother with the awkward transformation of the baby to a pig. And it’s ugly as sin.
So after whatever THAT was, Alice has a run-in with the Cheshire Cat that I mentioned earlier, that was also in the Duchess’s house for some reason.
They talk to each other about “being mad” and nothing actually that productive comes out of it.
However, there is a small recording goof on the radio play’s end. When Alice asks the Cheshire Cat “How do you know that you’re mad?”
She completely stammers on that line, and looks dreadful.
The movie didn’t even bother to edit that out.
And this is only one recording error that Cinematronic didn’t bother to fix with its own movie!
So after the Cheshire Cat disappears, Alice finally comes to the iconic Mad Tea Party scene.
This is the most boring part of the movie. It’s all just complete filler for most of the film. The Mad Hatter isn’t even that interesting, in the sense that he’s supposed to be wacky and “mad.”
But he’s just really monotone.
Also, ANOTHER recording error!
During a segment where Alice and the Mad Hatter are talking about being rude to each other, their mic’s begin to peak and have an annoying pop sound that interrupts whatever they’re trying to say.
Also, an animation error where whenever the Mad Hatter blinks, he loses his eyes. He doesn’t even close them.
They just vanish.
After a whole ten minutes of nothing and a bland musical number (yes ANOTHER one) we finally leave that excuse of a tea party scene and move on to the next part of the story.
She finally gets the key to go to the garden she’s been wanting to go to at the beginning of the film.
While she passes some poor excuses of roses, she meets up with the cards from earlier, and they introduce the worst characters in the entirety of the film.
The King and Queen of Hearts.
I know I made fun of a lot of the character designs in this film, but it’s because they really, really are that bad.
But these two, they just take the whole mess of a cake. And I wouldn’t even be surprised if it wasn’t cake.
So after they meet, The Queen walks Alice to a trail that lacks anything special, and she meets up with the Cheshire Cat again, who gets into a scuffle with the King because the cat wouldn’t kiss the kings’ hand.
Which is a whole lot of fodder that isn’t really important right now.
Alice then meets up with the Duchess again, and we see her in her strange, mean spirited glory.
She mentions something about a griffon and Alice, out of braindead curiosity, goes to see it.
But, she then realizes that it isn’t a griffon, it’s a dragon. But it decides to help Alice anyway by carrying her in the worst way possible.
Yeah, because THIS is safe.
So after she lands on some strange island, Alice meets up with another character- the only OK designed character in this whole thing.
And the only thing they do with him is two musical numbers with him and the dragon/griffon thing.
So after that, the dragon takes Alice and the turtle-thing back to the Queen of Hearts’ castle for a trial, and from there, Alice decides to make fun of the king wearing a jury’s wig with his crown.
I told you, Alice here is a complete moron.
And then Alice gets called up to represent her case, but all of a sudden starts growing. No explanation on the recordings OR the movie’s part at all. She just grows.
And then after that, we finally came to a conclusion.
After the queen yells at her and demands for her to be beheaded, she gets flashbacks to the moment she fell from the rabbit hole that fateful day, and wakes up, due to her sister’s whining.
We then see all of the characters all around Alice seven though it was just a dream, and the movie finally ends.
Wow. What a trip.
This thing was a trip and a half. It was completely awful to fully sit through.
And it doesn’t help that not only is the animation complete garbage, it’s also got a terrible script and voice acting. I don’t how you manage to be the bottom of the barrel when it comes to animated films, but this manages to do it.
So, if it’s so bad, how come barely anyone is talking about it? Well, I’m not 100% on that. I’ve only seen a few videos talking about this movie, and even then, there’s not much.
But one interesting thing did come from this movie.
Whether it be good or bad- it was a creepypasta.
Creepypastas are creepy internet stories that are spread around the internet to scare kids and for internet clout.
Of course, most of these are satire of “lost” Tv show episodes or movies, this one spirialed an interesting creepypasta.
And the creepypasta made from this was called “MS Paint Alice in Wonderland.” It’s a straightforward title. Nothing sugar coated if you’ve actually sat down and seen the film.
It is something that does look like it was animated with MS Paint.
But, what is the actual story that spiraled from this?
It’s cheesy, very much satire and loosely based on the film and trying to be scary, but it doesn't mean it doesn’t make for a good read.
There is a Creepypasta Wiki page about this story, so if you want to check it out yourself, you can.
But in a very, very short summary…A guy picks up this film and almost gets haunted by it.
His boss gets involved and seems to commentate on it while they both watch the film together, and he claims he’s seen the film before.
After a watch through, the narrator catches Alice from the blink of his eye, and tries killing him in order to like her movie, all the while, a song plays that the narrator mentions a lot.
“Will you, won’t you, will you won’t you, will you, won’t you join the dance? Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you join the dance?"
And, that’s the story of the worst Alice in Wonderland film I have ever sat through and researched.
I didn’t think there would be a creepy internet story about this film, but I stumbled upon a reading of it, and was completely invested in this film again.
Let’s just hope there isn’t another film like this one in some time.
