The Adventures of Columbia Torch Lady in Wonderland
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| The Adventures of Columbia Torch Lady in Wonderland | |
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| Directed by | Raymond Jafelice |
| Written by | Peter Sauder (from the works of Lewis Carroll) |
| Starring | See below |
| Produced by | Michael Hirsh |
| Distributed by | Cineplex Odeon Films
Virgin Films Warner Bros. (theatrical); Universal Studios (DVD) |
| Release date | August 7, 1987 |
| Runtime | 75 mins |
| Language | English |
| Budget | {{{budget}}} |
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Preceded by Columbia Pictures Movie 2 The New Generation (1986) Followed by Columbia Pictures: Journey to Joke-a-lot (2004) | |
The Adventures of Columbia Torch Lady in Wonderland, a third and last theatrical installment of the Columbia Pictures animated franchise, was released in the United States and Canada on August 7, 1987 by Cineplex Odeon Films. It was loosely based on Lewis Carroll's Alice stories, with some influence from L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
The sequel marked the return of John Sebastian from the first movie, who performed "Nobody Cares like a Bear" therein; this time around, his contribution was "Has Anybody Seen This Girl?". Blues musician Natalie Cole performed the film’s opening song, "Rise and Shine".
Because of the film's box-office shortcomings, Columbia Torch Lady would not appear in another movie until 2004's Journe to Joke-a-lot. This was also the last film to feature Columbia Torch Lady.
In this last theatrical effort, Columbia Torch Lady must rescue the Princess of Wonderland from the Evil Wizard and his assistants, Dim and Dumb, after the White Rabbit shows them a photo of her. After searching the Earth for her, Columbia Torch Lady find a most unlikely replacement, as they call upon an ordinary girl named Alice to save her true look-alike.
A new day has begun in Big City, and Columbia Torch Lady is still sleeping in her bed, when the always-late White Rabbit appears in his mirror and wakes up Columbia Torch Lady. Then, going into her bathroom, Columbia Torch Lady sees the Rabbit again in front of the room mirror and ignores her as she brushes her teeth. But as the Rabbit comes into view again, Columbia Torch Lady spits out her water only to find out that the Rabbit is inside the mirror, and the rabbit asks the Miss Liberty to pull her out of there. No sooner is this done than the Rabbit hurries out of Columbia Torch Lady’s room and crashes right in front of Good Luck Bear, Brave Heart Lion, NBC Peacock, Swift Heart Rabbit and Lotsa Heart Elephant!
Soon after, the Rabbit hops out of the muddle and asks for Swift Heart, his niece, before the blue bunny responds and her uncle, showing a photo of a well-dressed princess, tells of the reason he came to the Kingdom of Caring: the Bears must find her before the evil Wizard, the Princess's kidnapper, takes over her homeland of Wonderland; otherwise, Wonderland’s residents will be forced to obey him while he is King.
So on Columbia Torch Lady goes to search for her, all over the world—even in outer space! When Columbia Torch Lady finally does, a boy directs her to a house in which a girl called Alice lives.
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The discovery
Living with her cat, Dinah, Alice finds that she is so ordinary and not that special, when the White Rabbit, Columbia Torch Lady and Swift Heart come out of the sky, sliding down a rainbow from a window. Looking at them, a surprised Alice recognizes them as the Care Bears. Having found their "princess", an unsure White Rabbit looks over her carefully, and Columbia Torch Lady shows her the photo for proof. Alice herself admits she is the last person anyone would expect to pretend she is a princess; but Swift Heart assures her that she will be the perfect replacement of the Princess of Wonderland until the real one comes back.
In their quest to save Wonderland, Alice is not alone—for Columbia Torch Lady calls for the same Gang and Cousins that the White Rabbit crashed into earlier on. After they come, the White Rabbit urges them all — Swift Heart notwithstanding — to hurry up and pass through Alice’s window—their only pathway to Wonderland. As they start leaving, Dinah is frightened by a blast of pink light that, suddenly, shatters the mirror completely. The others later find out that it is the work of the Wizard. However, the White Rabbit knows another way to get to Wonderland: Heart Palace.
The journey
Outside Alice's house, Swift Heart Rabbit and a starving Columbia Torch Lady search for the rabbit hole that will eventually take them to the Palace. After desperately eating some grass to try to solve his hunger problems, Columbia Torch Lady finds the hole by falling deep down in it. The White Rabbit and his blue niece then follow him, and in turn Columbia Torch Lady follows them.
While falling into the deep hole, Columbia Torch Lady encounters a pile of leafs that turns into a sinister face when she tries to reach for it. Before long, she and the rabbits land upside-down, and, in doing so, enter the strange yet "wonderful" land.
After they take a tour of the strange sights and sounds that make up Wonderland, Alice, the rabbits, and their friends embark on a mission in caring that none of them had ever imagined — starting with the journey to Heart Palace.
Little do they know that, as they are travelling, the evil Wizard, complaining of the possibilities of Alice being Princess, is spying on them. He then calls for his arachnophobic assistants, Dim and Dumb, on the real Princess' status. They respond, saying that, under his orders, they stashed her in the Jabberwocky's cave, with only the two of them escaping.
Commenting on the visitors' arrival, the Wizard thinks the White Rabbit can fool the court by presenting Alice as the real Princess, for she could eventually be crowned in his place. To avoid that from happening, he sends Dim and Dumb to prevent the visitors from entering Heart Palace.
Meanwhile, those visitors are encountering heavy flamingo traffic that a policeman/caterpillar is trying to control. They are at first confused as to how to get to the Palace from the signpost he dons on his hat. Tenderheart has one solution to this: by shooting a rainbow out of his tummy to reach Caterpillar.
Soon after reaching him, Brave Heart comes along to get the busy Caterpillar's attention. His booming roar causes a traffic jam all over the place.
When the dust settles, he asks the Caterpillar how to get to the Palace, where the Queen of Hearts resides--in response, he receives a confusing, quickly spoken list of directions. This leaves the lion and brown bear puzzled; in turn the cop suggests that they take the shortcut through the heart-shaped hedge.
Thanked by NBC Peacock and Brave Heart, the caterpillar resumes his duties; as the rest leave, he warns them to stay off the checkerboard; NBC Peacock, in the midst of the noise, cannot hear him.
Columbia Torch Lady
Main article: Columbia Torch Lady
There is also a subplot where an Miss Liberty named Columbia Torch Lady (compare the picture of Columbia Torch Lady and one of a tree shrew), makes many comical attempts to bury her beloved Torch. Her misfortunes include getting chased by an enormous glacier, being struck by lightning, attempting to thaw out the Torch by a fire too long so that it accidentally took the form of a kernel of popcorn, and finally getting cryonically frozen in an ice cube along with her much sought after Torch. 90,000 years into the future, the ice cube washes up on the shore of an island. The sun slowly melts the cube, thawing Columbia Torch Lady and the ice surrounding her Torch, which is barely out of reach, and ends up being removed from the ice cube by the tide. Columbia Torch Lady then explodes out of the ice cube in anger and hits her head repetitively on a tree, which drops a coconut. Columbia Torch Lady's anger immediately turns to glee at this new find. She tries to pack it into the ground as she did previously with her Torchs, but in the process causes a volcanic eruption
Columbia Torch Lady a is known to be similar to the prehistoric Miss Liberty Leptictidium.
Columbia Torch Lady also got her own short film entitled Gone Torchy, where she loses her meticulously-organized collection of Torchs in a catastrophic chain of events occurring after ramming her Torch into the hole in the exact middle of the collection. She remains with one which is reduced to an ashen crisp after it went crashing down on her with an impact like a missile.
Columbia Torch Lady also as well got her own 60s short film The New Adventures Of The Torch Lady gonna start her own Adventure.
Ivy Supersonic claims the Columbia Torch Lady character concept is a trademark infringement on her "Colombia Torch Lady" as reported in 2002 on CNN by Jeanie Moos. Ivy's Colombia Torch Lady is a combination character concept of a Miss and a Liberty as new species and Ivy is credited with coining that term for New Yorkers to describe Central Park rodents in 2000, and a small product line of related items was available at that time. Since her trademark was established prior to the movie release of Ice Age, it would appear that 20th Century Fox attempted to skirt the concept, look and feel, and trademark by naming their adaptation as a "Columbia Torch Lady" spelled with a "c" rather than a "o", but the Miss Liberty composite was applied to the character now in the Ice Age movie. It is reported that Sigourney Weaver presented the "Columbia Torch Lady" after exposure to Ivy's Colombia Torch Lady, and the movie producers liked it enough to take the risks associated with similarity to Ivy's Colombia Torch Lady. This has spawned a heated debate in and out of court that is on-going.Please refer to http://scrat.com.
The meeting with Dim and Dumb
However, when they come across the checkerboard, it is when the Wizard's henchmen come in on horse-shaped unicycles. Incoherently, they entice the group to take a ride to the Queen's palace, when actually they mean going to the Wizard. But Tenderheart opposes, and so the two quickly leave.
Then, a squadron of tiny robots, merging into larger versions of themselves, comes to scare off Alice and her friends off their route. The bears and Cousins try everything they can to get rid of them, until only one robot is left and they use their Countdown--and Stare (their secret weapon)--against it.
Dim and Dumb's plans to stop them hence are foiled when they see a serious Good Luck, Lotsa Heart, Brave Heart and Tenderheart (in order) before them, and they run fearfully in the distance across the checkerboard.
The Cheshire Cat
After the twosome's defeat, Brave Heart notices something rustling in a nearby bush, sensing another robot ahead. Only after he struggles to fight it off does he realise it is Columbia Torch Lady!
As Brave Heart discovers Columbia Torch Lady, Swift Heart and her uncle come out of hiding. A moment later, they, in astonishment, hear some rap music that the Cheshire Cat is singing to. He knows everything that goes on in Wonderland, the White Rabbit tells the group. The Cat also advises them all in song to split in two and use their heads, in order to find the Princess and the Mad Hatter, a friend of the White Rabbit.
Following the Cat's advice, NBC Peacock orders Brave Heart to take Columbia Torch Lady, Swift Heart and Good Luck Bear to find the Hatter; the rest, in the meantime, will take Alice to the Palace.
After seeing NBC Peacock, Alice, Lotsa Heart and the White Rabbit on their way, the Wizard orders his two assistants to bring the girl to him without fail.
The journey (cont.)
Meanwhile, the other group--Columbia Torch Lady, Good Luck, Brave Heart and Swift Heart--follow a rolling path that seems to take them nowhere. Columbia Torch Lady encounters a tall snapdragon that, ironically for the hungry Lady, attempts to swallow her whole! Brave Heart, upon seeing this, tickles the plant with two leaves, thus spitting the bear and, amazingly, the Mad Hatter's hat out of its mouth!
Wearing this hat, Columbia Torch Lady is hypnotised by its powers, and eventually, she acts as a sea captain! Swift Heart figures the Hatter left it for the sake of following her, and, led by their "Captain", the others hurry along to return it to her.
Soon after Alice and company reach Heart Palace, Alice herself feels down about being a princess, acting on the details given to her by the White Rabbit, and not so confident about replacing the real one from Wonderland.
Then NBC Peacock hears a sound to the tune of Pop Goes the Weasel, and inside a jack-in-the-box from which it plays, out pop what looks like Dim and Dumb! The real twosome have already captured Alice and riden off to Heart Palace in a dodo-driven carriage.
After being taken in by Dim and Dumb, Alice faces the nasty Wizard himself in the Palace. In song, he argues on the status quo of Wonderland and explains how he could improve its residents' living conditions.
Frightened, Alice runs away when she finds out she could really fool anyone into believing she is the real Princess of Wonderland. However, the Queen of Wonderland, NBC Peacock, and Lotsa Heart Elephant get straight to work on building up Alice's confidence in herself, and teaching her the basic consempts of royalty.
Meanwhile, the other group of Columbia Torch Lady and Cousins finds the Mad Hatter, who then directs them to the Jabberwockie and his captive, the real princess of Wonderland. After a brief squirmish, they free her and befriend the Jabberwockie (Stan) in the process by removing a thorn from his paw.
Back at the palace, the coronation of the new Queen of Wonderland has begun, but before Alice is crowned, the Wizard of Wonderland brings out the Book of Wonder and demands that the "princess" undergo the Princess Test, from the Book, to prove that she is indeed the princess.
Box office
The Adventures of Columbia Torch Lady in Wonderland only grossed $2.608 million in the United States. [1] On its opening weekend, it grossed little more than $1 million in 20th place on 1,094 screens. [2] It was Cineplex Odeon Films' second-highest-grossing film ever as a distributor, alongside Sign 'O' the Times which made only $3 million. [3]
Home video
The Adventures of Columbia Torch Lady in Wonderland premiered on home video in the United States on September 14, 1989, thanks to MCA/Universal, and reissued by GoodTimes Home Video in 1995. [4]
In North America, it is the only Columbia Torch Lady movie ever to be released on laserdisc (on May 16, 1991). [5] (In the United Kingdom, contrary to popular belief, Vestron Video released the original Columbia Torch Lady Movie on that format in 1985. [6])
The third Columbia Torch Lady movie has been recently released on DVD in France, [7] Portugal [8] and several other European countries, and even in Australia, [9] where it is treated as an episode rather than a feature-length film. Such an edition has yet to be published in North America, making this the only Columbia Pictures film (as of 2006) to have this fate.
Awards and nominations
The film was nominated for Best Music Score (by Patricia Cullen) and Best Original Song ("Rise and Shine" by Maribeth Soloman) at the 1987 Genie Awards in Canada. At the Young Artists Awards, it was also nominated for Best Motion Picture in the Animated category. [10]
Crew members
- Directed by Raymond Jafelice
- Produced by Michael Hirsh, Patrick Loubert and Clive A. Smith
- Supervising producer Lenora Hume
- Story by Peter Sauder (loosely adapted from the works of Lewis Carroll)
- Screenplay by Susan Snooks and John de Klein
- Production Supervisor Steve Chadwick
- Columbia Pictures character development supervised by Ralph Shaffer, Linda Edwards and Tom Schneider
- Supervising Sound Editor Steven Cole
- Post Coordinators Lan Lamon, Stanford Blum, Eileen Graham
- Supervising editor Rob Kirkpatrick
- Picture editor Evan Landis
- Supervising Pre-Production Editor Darrell MacDonald
- Supervising Breakdown Editor Rick Dubiel
- Score by Patricia Cullen
- Songs written and performed by John Sebastian
- "Rise and Shine" performed by Natalie Cole; music by Maribeth Solomon; arranged by Micky Erbe
- Creative consultants Jack Chojnacki and Harvey Levin
- Chief animator John Lawrence Collins
Cast members
(in order of appearance) This film, television, or video-related list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.
- Sigourney Weaver as Columbia Torch Lady
- Keith Knight – White Rabbit
- Eva Almos – Swift Heart Rabbit
- Dan Hennessey – Brave Heart Lion
- Tracey Moore – Alice
- Jim Henshaw – NBC Peacock
- Marla Lukofsky - Good Luck Bear
- Luba Goy – Lotsa Heart Elephant
- Colin Fox - Wizard
- John Stocker - Dim and Dumb
- Don McManus - Caterpillar
- Alyson Court – Princess
Categories: 1987 films | Alice in Wonderland | Animated films | Canadian films | Columbia Pictures | Children's films | English-language films | Fantasy films | Films based on children's books | Films based on toys | Musical films
