Betty Boop in Blunderland
Toonstalgia
Directed by Dave Fleischer
Animated by Roland Crandall, Thomas Johnson
Betty Boop, voiced by Bonnie Poe
Rating: Callooh, Callay
Lewis Carroll's novels, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass, are dreamy, weird, fantastique classics. They have been reconsidered, reimagined, reconceptualized and remade hundreds of times. Betty Boop took on Alice's role in a loose adaptation of both though it draws more inspiration from Wonderland than Looking Glass. An adaptation released around the same time was a box office flop named Alice in Wonderland by Norman Z. McLeod in 1933. It sticks fairly close to the source material. Betty subverted Alice back before subverting Alice was cool. The oldest adaptation was only 31 years old, released in 1903.
Many, many characters are included from the novels including Jabberwock, Mad Hatter, the Caterpillar, the Duchess, the playing cards and Humpty Dumpty. The cartoon features clever touches like Shrink-ola and different visual puns. Betty sings a song but the music is not noteworthy in this short. Of course, there's tee-hee humor like Betty adding a clip to her skirt when she is falling down the rabbithole to keep it shut. But it wouldn't be a Betty Boop cartoon without a little of that.
Sources
Betty in Blunderland. Dir. Dave Fleischer. Perf. Bonnie Poe. Paramount Pictures, 1934.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_in_Blunderland
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