Alice Through the Looking Glass

Bottom line: The perfectly OK Alice Through the Looking Glass is getting pretty terrible reviews but I don't really know why; it makes me want to ask, "What were you expecting?" 2.5/4

Alice Through the Looking Glass is the sequel to Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland. In this adventure, the Mad Hatter (Depp) is dying of sadness because he believes that his family (long thought to have perished at the hands of the Jabberwocky) is actually alive but just lost. Alice has to, once again, go into Wonderland to save the day even if it means traveling through time.

How's that for a spoiler free plot teaser? Any-who, the first thing I would like to note about this iteration of the franchise is how it's not directed by Tim Burton and you can tell because we aren't being beaten over the head with whimsy. We've got Johnny Depp returning as the Mad Hatter but he's just kind of in the background doing his thing instead of being center stage.

While I didn't see the first one, my wife did and she thought this one was better. I suspect that that might be the case because with the first one, the crux of the movie is the spectacle that is Burton's interpretation of Alice in Wonderland; we have to introduce all of the characters and tie them all together with an adventure. In Through the Looking Glass, we can just have an adventure.

The performances were all perfectly good. In one review, someone said that Sasha Baron Cohen's performance of Time was just Cohen doing an impression of Werner Herzog. Herzog is the guy who made Grizzly Man. Sure, I can see that in terms of his accent but I don't think it's a minus point to the movie. I thought he was a solidly balanced character that I enjoyed watching.

The big thing about this movie were the special effects. I thought there were fine too; not earth shattering nor dull.

Maybe one of the reasons I didn't mind this movie was because my expectations were appropriately grounded. I was expecting it to be unwatchably bad. Another reason was that I had just finished watching Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory which I loathed, so Through the Looking Glass felt like a Burton-esque film that wasn't garbage. Overall, I'd recommend Alice Through the Looking Glass if you are looking for a light movie, maybe a weekend matinée.

I liked the fact that the script of the movie is full of puns and rhymes taken from the original work. This makes the movie as interesting as the original Through the Looking Glass since Lewiss Carroll was famous with riddles and hidden messages in his works and he was known to include mathematical wonders in the writing such as the case of Alice in Wonderland. Maybe the plot was not greasy enough but overall it was a nice movie. The character that I liked most is Hatter( Johnny Depp) who has again striken me with his ability to wear different hats of roles and to impersonate himself in the character he's given. Also, the character of Alice was a fit with her angelic smile that reflects an innocent adult.

It is "decent". Not extraordinary, nor a waste of time. The sad thing is that it focuses more on the sparkly scenes, like these would impact the viewer the most. In fact, the story lacks substance and this should have been the epicentre of interest. It is far from great, although it's not a disappointment. Something slipped through the fingers of the producers when they were producing this movie. Now it's another commercial film.

Alice travels into the past on an adventure to save the Mad Hatter from the grief that is poisoning him.

Set in 1875, it brings up albeit only briefly explores the misogyny of patriarchy, where mediocre men take away everything from extraordinary women through the limitations they put on them. It seems more comfortable examining problems between family members; Tarrant feels rejected by his father, mostly because he has been. And this is of course a much safer thing for a mainstream film to go into, and Disney prefers taking the well trodden path to profit to taking risks. Just like the Tim Burton original, this is nowhere near as creative and imaginative as the 1951 original, or, from what I hear, the novels. This does take a few steps in the right direction, though both of these definitely lose something in trying to make Wonderland a real, physical place that operates on some continuity and logic, when part of the appeal was that this was not the case. I appreciate that this is something that has been done with a lot of adaptations in recent years, and a lot, perhaps even most, of the time that is the right approach; however, like any rule, it has exceptions, and this is one. This is essentially Back to the Future in a fantasy setting; if you altered various aesthetic aspects, and a handful of lines of dialog, you would never get that it was related to the work of Lewis Carroll, which should never be the case with this sort of thing. The third Men in Black movie has a similar issue.

It is very much one of those sequels that expects you to have watched and remember the predecessor; it doesn't particularly reintroduce the recurring characters. The action is exciting, especially in the effective climax. This is filmed and edited well, capturing the sometimes epic scope. The special effects are convincing, and the design of sets, creatures, makeup and costumes is impressive and provides a very high number of memorable, unique sights and sounds. These include traversing the face of a massive clock, living chess pieces, seconds becoming minutes(you'll know it when you reach it), talking animals, bipedal vegetables, loops and a seemingly non-stop barrage of time puns. The cast are clearly having a ball, in particular the always deeply engaging to watch Helena Bonham Carter.

I recommend this only to the biggest fans of those involved. 7/10.

I couldn't have been less interested in this franchise, completely dumbfounded as to why they were trying to make sense out of an intentionally non-sensical world. This sequel continues that journey into unneeded clarity, though with better results. Maybe I was just more prepared for what was to come, but I also think it has decent emotional arcs and cool visual ideas, despite Depp's lazy performance and way too much plot.