A friend of mine had a wife (now deceased) who was obsessed with taping large blocks of oldies from TCM. I've inherited those tapes and watch them while I add items online for my used bookshop. It was a nice surprise to find this again; I really think I was younger than 20 the last time I saw this (I'm 62 now) , and I'm not even sure I saw it all the way thru at the time. Thank God for the credits/intro of the characters; I'm sure someone at Paramount insisted on it after a preview; you'd never know who was who without it. I have no way of knowing if all these actors are 'hot' in '33. I watch a ton of oldies and a lot of the names just flew by without registering. Charlotte Henry was great; not knowing her film career, I wasn't able to tell her age at all, so it felt a little weird being a bit attracted to her; glad now to know she was all of 20 during filming ! The oddball way they stretched her to shrink her and scale her didn't do it for me; then they did it right once with a perfect 'small-ify' Also impressed (I laughed in wonderment) when she got herself skeddaddled down some stairs, around a corner and right out an open door ! I'm not sure 'Alice' should ever BE a movie; the events and people go by too fast and it all plays like a nightmare you have after a hot Latin meal... Some makeups seem more like a slathering of lemon meringue pie than a mask; the faces slide around in them with only the eyes changing. I stopped with my head in my upturned palms to stare hard only three times, W.C.Fields, Cary Grant and Gary Cooper. Fields to try and figure if it really was him I was seeing, Grant to try and figure out if it was really him I was hearing, and Cooper because his character was the best portrayal ! The only character to seem to care for Alice, he was funny, gentle, and oh, all those falls ! Louise Fazenda was sexually alluring as the White Queen, I wanted her to take the fake nose off so I could better enjoy her... I was a fun 77 minutes. I wonder what they cut from the original 90 ?
Review of Alice in Wonderland
