User Reviews

. . . think that it is 'okay' to disseminate seamy perversion such as ALICE IN THE JUNGLE?! No rational person could suffer all the way through this cartoon without concluding that it is full of demeaning images of certain respected groups among the Human Family. Perhaps there are a few Capitol Steps invaders who would NOT have a serious problem with ALICE IN THE JUNGLE. However, hopefully America's Intelligence Community is conducting follow-up investigations of anyone ordering this animated short, in order to determine if they were inadvertently hoodwinked by the Dizzy Corporation into assaulting their eyeballs with it, or if they KNOWINGLY encouraged such outrageous filth to cross the threshold of their consciousness.

"Alice in the Jungle" is another entry to the Alice series directed by the young Walt Disney and starring the even younger Virginia Davis. It is among the more known short films from this Alice franchise and runs for seven minutes. About the story, there is not too much to say as the title summarizes it perfectly. Alice and her buddy Julius the cat run into many jungle animals, also several not so friendly ones, but also a bunch of absurdly friendly elephants goofing around. Alice is as always the only non-animated character in here and this time (also as you see with the runtime) they included no real life story, but put Alice right away into the world of animation. As a whole, this is on par with the other Alice films, but not really worth seeing yet. Still, it is a tolerable series thanks to Davis' fine child performances and Disney needing these weaker works to collect experience on his path to greatness.

The summary pretty much sums what this Walt Disney Alice short is about but I'll at least mention a few gags. The "mistaking the barber shop pole for a candy cane" would later be in a Felix the Cat short called Outdoor Indore (1928) though I don't know if Otto Messmer stole this from Disney or vice versa having not seen all Felix shorts. In fact, a lot of gags are reminiscent of the Pat Sullivan creation like Julius detaching his tail and making it a slingshot or using lines meant to visualize seeing something and using those lines to climb over something. Later, we see a lion bite the cat's tail off before Julius manages to use a tree branch to hold lion's mouth to get tail back. Then at the end when Alice, Julius, and an elephant pal run away from the lion, Julius thinks a question mark balloon that he uses to lift him, Alice, and the elephant to safety in the sky. Since this is early Walt Disney, this cartoon is primitive by today's standards. However, if you love animation and Disney in particular, by all means check this one out!