ALICE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS Review

For a movie wholly concentrated on time, time travel, and the essence of time it sure feels like this sequel to the 2010 Alice in Wonderland is a huge waste of it. Time that is. Of course, given that 2010 Tim Burton film made north of a billion dollars at the box office it was an inevitability that we'd be getting a sequel sooner or later, but it's still somewhat surprising it has come this late. Six years have passed, a handful of other live action adaptations of classic Disney animated films have been made and yet here we are, back in Wonderland. Having not read the Lewis Carroll stories on which these adventures of Alice have been based one has to imagine that to have made as big a cultural impact as they have they were more inventive and innovative than the film adaptations we're now receiving. To say that is to say that Alice Through the Looking Glass is no more interesting or compelling than its predecessor. It wasn't without hope that this viewer walked into this six year later sequel with optimism that new director James Bobin (The Muppets) might bring something fresh and exciting to what otherwise felt like the jaded side of Tim Burton that was incarnated in his predecessor. Transforming the widely known Wonderland as perceived by the naiveté of a child Alice, Burton turned the fantasy world into Underland and gave us a darker film than expected. That was all well and good until the movie didn't really work, but Bobin has now come along to bring to life a brighter, more enticing time in the realm of Wonderland as our heroine must travel through space and time to try and save the dying of depression Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp). This brings to mind the biggest undoing of Through the Looking Glass in that its narrative drive simply isn't compelling enough to sustain its nearly two hour runtime. It becomes repetitive and as if it is searching for disparate plot strands to try and pull together a complete story. Linda Woolverton, who has made a career out of writing Disney films (including The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast), adapted Carroll's story here and while there are certainly moments of inspired humor, a few nice character moments, and grand majestic visuals by way of Bobin and the special effects team, there is no substance to the product as a whole. It is a wonder how forgettable the film turns out to be.

First Trailer for ALICE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS

Disney has been releasing short clips of Alice Through the Looking Glass footage all week via their Twitter account, but today we get the first full trailer for the sequel to Tim Burton's 2010 billion dollar earner. While Burton did not return to direct the sequel, his replacement is the only thing giving me hope this new film might even be the slightest bit better than the previous Alice film. Everything was in place for Burton's interpretation of the Lewis Carroll classic to be a rewarding experience at the movies, if not mainly for the involvement of Burton alone, given the director's visual style lined up well with what most imagine Wonderland might look like were it actually brought to life. Instead, that film turned out to be a mess of CGI and convoluted storytelling that to this day I'm still not sure makes complete sense. And yet, the film earned more than a billion dollars worldwide so here we are. With director James Bobin (The Muppets) taking over we find Mia Wasikowska's Alice being recruited back to Wonderland after Johnny Depp's The Mad Hatter mysteriously goes bad. In order to figure out what happened to him, Alice must step back in time through a literal clock. That said, the imagery of this first look is quite striking and there at least seems to be some driving force to the narrative which is more than I can say for it's predecessor. Alice Through the Looking Glass opens on May 27, 2016 and also stars Anne Hathaway and Helena Bonham Carter reprising their roles from Alice in Wonderland.