Alice Through the Looking Glass
Director: James Bobin
Stars: Mia Wasikowska, Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter
Duration: 113 mins
Class: PG
KRS Film Releasing Ltd

When I re-read my review of 2010’s Alice in Wonderland I was tickled to note my comment that Mia Wasikowska, then pretty much at the fledgling stage of her career, “struggles to make much of an impact as Alice… she is often upstaged by the frenetic action around her… it takes a long while for her to make her presence felt...”.

Little did I know, then, that Wasikowska was going on to become one of the most exciting actors of her generation, with superb roles, since Alice in – among others – The Kids are Alright (2010), Jane Eyre (2011), Stoker (2013), Only Lovers Left Alive (2014) and Crimson Peak (2015). The now 26-year-old certainly displays remarkable range and versatility.

So much so, that hers is the performance that truly drives its sequel. In Alice Through the Looking Glass, Wasikowska’s Alice is more confident, charming and dynamic, and makes for a dashing heroine here, smashing the conventions of the time to prove herself a truly independent and forward-thinking woman. It is her performance that grounds a story whose potential is oftentimes overwhelmed by the sea of effects that surrounds it.

The story opens in the midst of a ferocious storm at sea where a merchant ship captained by Alice Kingsleigh (Wasikowska) is in danger of being shipwrecked as it fights off a pirate ship, but reaches safety thanks to her cool, calm and collected captaincy.

For this is what our heroine has been up to since she last visited Underland, realising her dreams and exploring the world as captain of her own ship. Back in London, however, Alice discovers that 19th-century attitudes to women haven’t changed despite her considerable achievements and her former, boorish suitor is threatening her family home. Yet, she is soon drawn back to Underland to discover that the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp) is very ill, and it is only if she seeks out the help of Time (Sacha Baron Cohen) himself can she save her friend.

The visuals are certainly eye-popping and provide a feast for the eyes with the characters and their surroundings leaping off the screen

Time is reluctant to help, so she swipes his ‘chronosphere,’ a time travelling device which she uses to travel back in time to save the Hatter’s family. They had been killed in a freak accident years before, an event that, for some reason, is only now really haunting him. She also discovers what caused the rift between the sibling Red and White Queens (Helena Bonham Carter and Anne Hathaway).

Alice Through the Looking Glass takes few elements from Lewis Carroll’s book of the same name, and is, in fact, a fictional story by Linda Woolverton based on Carroll’s familiar and beloved characters. It purports to be an origin story for the likes of the Hatter and the Queens.

However, it walks down a rather mundane and meandering narrative path and its sub-plots about the Hatter being a disappointment to his father, and the Queens as children falling out over a stolen cookie, do not do justice to the charmingly ec-centric nature of the characters involved and, crucially, the overall idiosyncratic tone that formed the basis of its literary source.

The ordinariness of the story is even more surprising coming from someone of Woolverton’s calibre, who has the likes of Disney Classics Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King and Maleficent under her belt, while director James Bobin relies too heavily on effects to tell the story.

I cannot deny, for a moment, that the visuals are certainly eye-popping and provide a feast for the eyes. The characters and their surroundings leap off the screen thanks to the vivid colours and creative inventiveness of the hair, makeup, costume and production design with the bright primaries of the colour palette contrasting sharply with the darker and more sinister elements seen in Time’s world. Yet, colourful and imaginative though they are, and despite the often kinetic action on screen, there is little by way of true drama and emotion. It is the ensemble cast that makes for some engaging viewing. Wasikowska is surrounded by a colourful ensemble cast with Depp, Bonham Carter, Hathaway and other stalwarts, including the voices of Alan Rickman, Stephen Fry, Michael Sheen and Timothy Spall. They return to reprise their roles from the first film, with Baron-Cohen’s Time being suitably sinister and you wish they had a tighter and more creative story to work with.

It is difficult to shake the feeling that had Tim Burton, who directed the 2010 film and here serves as producer, been at the helm, he would have whipped everything into the oddball shape the film sorely needs.

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