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.
