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    Alice Through the Looking Glass

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    adamwatchesmovies@

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    The initial shock is gone and I must admit that a second time around, I like “Alice Through the Looking Glass” more. Don’t think this means I recommend it. This is an awful film. It’s so badly written it makes your head hurt.

    Several years after the first film, Alice (Mia Wasikowska) puts the single-handed invention of feminism on pause to travel to Underland and help her best friend in the whole world Tarrant Hightopp, the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp). Unresolved daddy issues have thrown him into a depression so severe he’s turning monochromatic and will probably fall over dead. If Alice can enter the lair of clockwork deity Time (Sacha Baron Cohen) and steal his chronometer, she can travel to the past, save the Hatter’s family, and get the nutty tea drinker out of his lethal funk.

    I didn’t think a trip to Wonder/Underland could get worse than the 2010 film. I was underestimating the powers of writer Linda Woolverton (whose animated films have been triumphs and live-action efforts... not so much). As a time travel movie, this rivals “A Sound of Thunder” as one of the worst I’ve ever seen. When Alice needs to go at a specific time, she doesn’t get there early to plan ahead; she gets there minutes before the event she’s attempting to prevent. When she fails to act correctly and history has failed to be altered, she doesn’t try again, she simply gives up. Yet another story that fails to understand the power of time travel.

    “But Wait!” you might say. “In the movie, they explicitly say that if you go back to the past and see yourself, it’ll destroy the entire universe! She’s only got one shot! ” and you’re right, except that if Alice had any brains, she’d leave herself notes, or do any number of other things to ensure her mission's success. If the residents of Underland are willing to risk all of their existence, past and present for the sake of the Hatter (wait, why is he so important again?) then surely she should give it her best shot.

    The flaws don’t stop there. This film just does stuff. It doesn’t matter if it makes no sense. The last time we saw Iracebeth of Crims (the Red Queen, played by Helena Bonham Carter), she was being exiled. Now, she’s returned with an army of vegetable people and possesses certain objects no one in their right mind would've allowed her to leave with. Well, they had to come up with some way to bring her back, right? To keep the fan service going, Alice runs into a child version of the Hatter, of The Cheshire Cat (Stephen Fry), of Bayard (the Bloodhound voiced by Timothy Spall), and other “favorites”. They’ve got plushies to sell, don’t you know? They eclipse every brief reference to the actual “Through the Looking Glass” novel by Lewis Carroll. Why director James Bobin bothered with them, I don't know. It’s not like this story resembles the source material in any way. It’s made infinitely more dreadful by the completely uncharismatic Mia Wasikowska who is asked to act against a whole bunch of CGI characters and can’t pull it off.

    This film can’t even figure out what it wants to do with Underland. Is it supposed to be a real place our heroine travels to, or a figment of her imagination? It doesn’t matter. The plot chugs along, moving pieces back and forth until the credits begin rolling. It’s impossible to care about anything because there are no rules. There's no attempt to recreate the whimsy of the original story or the 1951 Disney film. "Alice Through the Looking Glass" is little more than special effects, costumes, and makeup vomited onto the screen. (On Blu-ray, July 21, 2017)

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    adamwatchesmovies@  16.6.2016 age: 26-35 2,867 reviews

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