The film adaptation of an anime series, Fushigi no Kuni no Alice (1983-1984), directed by the creator of Batman: The Animated Series, Bruce Timm, was released theatrically in Canada and Japan on September 25, 2020, digitally on Netflix in other territories on November 5, 2020, and via a premium video-on-demand and Paramount+ in the United States on March 4, 2021, to promote the recent Tim Burton versions, compared to Alice in Wonderland (1951) and Alice Through the Looking Glass (2016) which stars Hynden Walch as Alice, Scott Menville as Benny Bunny, Barry Humphries as Time, Whoopi Goldberg as the Queen of Hearts, Lord Sear as Humpty Dumpty, Robert De Niro as Cheshire Cat, Xzibit as the Mad Hatter, Eminem as the March Hare, Martin Short as the King of Hearts, Scott Innes as the Bandersnatch, Patrick Warburton as the White Rabbit and Hayden Panettiere as the White Queen and it features the animation style of Asterix: The Mansions of the Gods.
Plot synopsis
Alice (voiced by Hynden Walch) becomes bored with her sister (voiced by Tabitha St. Germain)'s history lesson on the Norman conquest of New England and expresses her want of adventure, leading her to a riverbank. There, Alice and Benny Bunny (voiced by Scott Menville) spot a passing White Rabbit (voiced by Patrick Warburton) in a waistcoat, exclaiming that he is "late for a very important date." She gives chase, following him into a large hole. She sees him leave through a tiny door, whose talking knob advises her to shrink to an appropriate height by drinking from a bottle marked "Drink Me." She does so and floats out through the keyhole into a sea of her own tears, which she cried after eating a biscuit marked "Eat Me," beforehand which made her grow very large. As she continues to follow the Rabbit, they both encounter numerous characters, including Mirana The White Queen (voiced by Hayden Panettiere), Tweedledum and Tweedledee (voiced by Charles Martinet), Bayard the bloodhound (voice of Albert Brooks), Dormouse (voice of Andrew Sabiston) and the Bandersnatch (voiced by Scott Innes), who recounts the tale of "The Walrus and the Carpenter (voiced by Lee Terwilliger and Richard Newman)."
Alice and Benny track the Rabbit to his house; he mistakes her for his housemaid, "Mary Ann," and sends her to retrieve his gloves. While searching for the gloves in the Rabbit's house, Alice finds and eats another cookie marked "Eat Me" and grows large again, getting stuck in the house. Thinking her a monster, the Rabbit asks the Dodo (voiced by Andrew Sabiston) to help expel her. When the Dodo decides to burn the house down, Alice escapes by eating a carrot from the Rabbit's garden, which causes her to shrink to three inches tall. Continuing to follow the Rabbit, Alice and Benny meet a garden of talking flowers who initially welcome her with a song, but then make disparaging comments about her appearance and order her to leave. Alice and Benny then encounter a Caterpillar (voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch), who becomes enraged at Alice and Benny after she laments her small size (which is the same as the Caterpillar's), after which the caterpillar turns into a butterfly and flies away. Before leaving, the Caterpillar advises Alice to eat a piece of a mushroom to alter her size stating that "one side will make you grow taller and the other side will make you grow shorter." She does so and returns to her original height, continuing her chase of the Rabbit. They both come across a large chessboard where the pieces are alive and they frighten them, causing them to accidentally knock over Humpty Dumpty (voiced by Lord Sear). The king's horses and men rush to put him back together.
In the woods, Alice and Benny get stuck between multiple paths and encounter the Cheshire Cat (voiced by Robert De Niro), in which Alice asks which way does she and Benny need to go. He tells them that it all depends on where she wants to go, in which she states that "it doesn't really matter as long as I..." but he cuts in sarcastically while grinning and tells her that it doesn't really matter which way she goes but that she should ask the Mad Hatter (voiced by Xzibit) and the March Hare (voiced by Eminem) to learn the Rabbit's location. She encounters both, along with the Dormouse, at the Hare's house having a mad tea party and celebrating their "unbirthdays." The Hatter and the Hare ask Alice and Benny to explain their predicament, to which Alice tries but becomes frustrated by their interruptions and absurd logic. As she prepares to leave, the Rabbit appears, continuing to exclaim that he is late; the Hatter examines the Rabbit's pocket watch and says it is "two days slow," and attempts to "fix" it by filling it with food and tea and ends up destroying it after declaring it "mad." The Rabbit laments that his watch was an "unbirthday present," and the Hatter and Hare sing "The Unbirthday Song" to him before throwing him back into the woods. Fed up with the nonsense, Alice and Benny decide to return home, but her surroundings completely change, and she gets lost. Fearing she is lost forever, she sits on a rock sobbing.
Mirana tells Alice and Benny that if they both want to save the Hatter's family, she and Benny must speak to Time (voiced by Barry Humphries) and use the Chronosphere, a powerful device that travels through time that only Alice can use since she is not originally part of Wonderland. She guides Alice and Benny to Time's castle, which is located inside a grandfather clock. Alice and Benny sneak into the castle and see Time go into a room full of pocket watches. Time pulls off the watch of one man, saying his time is up. Time spots Alice and Benny, who asks him to help her save her friend's family, but Time says the past cannot be changed.
Moments later, the Queen of Hearts (voiced by Whoopi Goldberg), arrives, as she is Time's sort-of girlfriend. He gives her a gift of a man getting his head chopped off. She tosses it to the side. Alice sees this as a chance to steal the Chronosphere. Time and the Queen of Hearts witness Alice getting away.
The Chronosphere activates, and it works like a ship. Alice and Benny take it through an ocean of time and tries to find Horunvendush Day to prevent the Hatter's family from dying. She is momentarily frightened by Jabberwocky's (voiced by Sean Bodkin) appearance breathing fire, so she ends up arriving much earlier on the day of what was supposed to be the Queen of Hearts' coronation. The Hatter is there with his whole family. the Queen of Hearts is ready to be crowned, but the crown won't fit on her swollen head. The crown breaks, and the Hatter leads everyone in a big laugh, infuriating the Queen of Hearts. After she throws a fit, her father (Richard Armitage) declares that she is unfit to rule the kingdom, so he names Mirana as the new queen. The Queen of Hearts storms off tearfully and swears vengeance against the Hatter family. The Hatter's father Zanik (voiced by Rhys Ifans) chastises his son for his behavior, making it sound like he is disappointed in his son.
Time, who has been going after Alice and Benny, end up in the same period and comes across the Hatter and his friends during a tea party. Time asks for Alice and Benny, but the Hatter keeps him waiting for her by saying he invited her to the tea party. The Hatter and his friends then start making a bunch of corny time-based puns. Time eventually gets sick of it and leaves, putting everyone stuck in one minute before TeaTime.
Alice and Benny go to try and speak to Mirana and her parents, inadvertently learning about another incident from long ago that led to the Queen of Hearts' behavior. Alice uses the Chronosphere to travel to this time in the hopes that she can prevent Horunvendush Day from happening at all. This brings Alice and Benny to the childhood of the sisters and most of her other friends. Alice and Benny meet the young Hatter, who brings Alice to his home. He introduces her to his father and says he wants to make Alice a hat. Hatter shows his father the blue feather hat from earlier, which Zanik takes and accidentally rips. Zanik throws it away, and Hatter runs away crying. What he never knew was that Zanik recovered the hat and kept it.
Alice then finds the sisters as children. Their mother (voiced by Hattie Morahan) was making tarts, and the young Queen of Hearts had been eating most of them. After their mother sent them away, Mirana snuck one-off and dropped some crumbs, which she kicked under Queen of Hearts' bed. When their mother found out, she spotted the crumbs by the bed and questioned Queen of Hearts. She told her sister to tell the truth, but Mirana says she didn't eat them. Queen of Hearts ran into the street and almost ran into a grandfather clock. Alice sees this and tries to stop her, but Queen of Hearts is distracted by Alice and Benny pushing the clock away, causing the girl to slip and hit her head on a fountain, resulting in her head swelling up. Alice and Benny then realize what Time meant by saying the past cannot be changed.
Time catches up to Alice and shows her what damage she has done to him by taking the Chronosphere. He warns her that she has put Wonderland in danger. Alice then escapes into a mirror that takes her back to her world.
Alice and Benny wake up in a mental hospital with her mother. Dr. Bennett (voiced by Andrew Scott) diagnoses her with 'female hysteria'. He attempts to sedate her forcefully, but Alice and Benny manage to get the needle away from him and stick him with it. Alice's mother and the orderlies see her trying to escape, and her mother tells her to run. Alice and Benny make it to another magic mirror and runs through it with the Chronosphere.
Alice arrives on Horunvendush Day as the Jabberwocky is attacking. She spots the Hatters running for it, but they are apprehended by Queen of Hearts' guards, proving that they are indeed alive in the present.
Alice returns to the present and runs to the Hatter's home, only to find all their friends gathered in his room, weeping. The Hatter is in his bed, just inches away from death, pale and colorless. Alice goes to him and says she finally believes him and says she is sorry. The Hatter opens his eyes, and he hugs Alice and Benny. She tells him that Queen of Hearts is keeping them prisoner, and the color in his hair returns as he decides to spring into action.
Alice, the Hatter, and all their friends ride to Queen of Hearts' castle. The Hatters are nowhere to be found, leaving the Hatter in despair once again. Suddenly, he, Benny, and Alice spot Queen of Hearts' ant farm, which has a top hat forming in it. The Hatters are in there, shrunken to a tiny size, but the Hatter is happy to see them again. Queen of Hearts and Time find them too, but she turns on Time and steals the Chronosphere for herself and brings Mirana with her. The now weakened Time tells Alice to stop Queen of Hearts before time is no more. Alice and Benny have Time taken back to his castle while she goes after Iracebeth.
Queen of Hearts takes Mirana to the night where she lied about the tart so that she can tell the truth. When the same event happens, Queen of Hearts kicks the door open and screams, causing her younger self to see her and making time begin to freeze in Wonderland. Alice manages to get the Chronosphere back and race to the present. She rushes through Time's castle as everyone starts to freeze up. Alice and Benny reach the room of the Chronosphere and nearly make it before she gets frozen too. Somehow, a spark from the Chronosphere makes it out and pulls itself toward its holding place, restoring everything to order.
Queen of Hearts still thinks nobody loves her, but Mirana says she does, and she apologizes for lying. The two of them reconcile. They then give the Hatter the "eat me" cake to give to the Hatters so they may grow back to normal size. The Hatter tells his father that he makes hats, and Zanik says he always believed in his son. Alice and Benny must then say goodbye to the Hatter and her friends once again as the mirror reappears, and she must go home.
In the real world, Alice's mother is ready to sign over the ship until Alice shows up. She says it's okay if she sells the ship if her mother can keep her house. Her mother then tears up Hamish's contract in his face, leaving him humiliated in front of his family yet again.
The film concludes with Alice and Benny yell at themselves to wake up; she does, thanks to her sister, and they all three return home for tea.
