Alice Through the Looking Glass - Surprised they ever made a sequel

Okay, I’m in the minority, but I quite liked Tim Burton’s take on Alice in Wonderland.  As he said at the time – the original Disney cartoon version was just a girl wandering from one random encounter with a wacky character to the next, i.e. no story.  Yeah, I liked the cartoon exploits as a kid, but I have to agree with that description, so I quite enjoyed watching Alice turn into a knight and slay a dragon-type creature while Johnny Depp looks on.

However, I sometimes think I was the only one who felt like that.  The 2010 live action Alice in Wonderland was largely slated on all fronts and accused of everything from an overuse in CGI (er, what blockbuster film doesn’t these days?!) to a lack of character development (um, again, what film doesn’t these days?!).  Anyway, because of the reception it received, I was pretty sure that would be the last time Johnny Depp ever plays a wild and wacky, exaggerated character (only joking, but I didn’t think he’d hung up his ‘mad’ hat for good).

So, we have the sequel – once again Alice is summoned to Wonderland, this time in order to stop the Mad Hatter from becoming mad (no, seriously).  To accomplish this, she needs to travel back in time to stop a cyborg from killing his mother.  Wait, that’s the plot to Terminator, but it was something like that – insert ‘dragon’ instead of cyborg and ‘family’ instead of mother.  And, if there’s one thing that every single time travel movie has taught us – it’s that messing with the timelines never ends well.  Or, in this case, makes for a bit of a hit and miss story.

Alice jumps from one time period to the next, never really staying in one for long.  Johnny Depp (again, fronting much of the promotional material) is left in the ‘present’ and only really stars for about twenty minutes of screen time, so Alice becomes an observer in one time period after another.  This kind of gives the ‘story’ a jumpy ‘sketch-feel’ to it.  Yes, Sacha Baron Cohen plays ‘Time’ (literally!) and is a pretty cool villain who we actually feel sorry for, as he’s just doing his job, but really the story is just one set piece after the next.

There are some ‘real’ elements set outside Wonderland that act as ‘bookends’ to the fantasy middle portion, but I’ll wager you’ll have forgotten the beginning once the Wonderland bits kick off.  They’re pretty much not needed as it’s all about the magical middle.

Personally, I preferred the original (granted I may be the only one).  I could happily watch it again whereas I don’t think that there was enough here to really warrant a second viewing.  There was so little plot and what was there was pretty predictable.  I doubt they’ll bother making a third as ‘Alice Through the Looking Glass’ is not currently performing too well at the Box Office, opening against the latest X-men movie and trying to bury Johnny Depp’s off-screen antics.

But, saying that, I took my Mum and daughter to see it and they both really, really liked it.  What do I know?  Maybe it’s simply more appealing to 72 and 11 year olds that 39 year old blokes who would have preferred to see Captain America: Civil War, but was severely overruled?

6/10 Should probably keep you awake if Freddy Krueger was haunting your nights