It’s time for ‘Alice’ and her cohorts to retire
Time isn’t on the side of Alice Through the Looking Glass.
Six years after Tim Burton put a trippy spin on Alice in Wonderland, the mediocre sequel ( out of four; eg rated PG; in theaters Friday) matches the original’s hypercolor palette and insane visuals, though it can’t cobble together an equally engaging plot or even a coherent one. Looking Glass is instead a competition to see how goofy Johnny Depp can be as the Mad Hatter and how many scenes (and hearts) Helena Bonham Carter can steal as the ragingly high-maintenance Red Queen.
Oh, yeah, Alice (Mia Wasikowska) is in this, too, though she’s overshadowed by even Humpty Dumpty’s shattered pieces in the follow-up directed by James Bobin ( The Muppets).
Years removed from her first adventure in Wonderland, Alice is now a sea captain who has traveled the globe, only to find herself in jeopardy of losing her home and vessel upon her return to London.
That subplot gets put on the Victorian shelf as soon as the caterpillar-turned-butterfly Absolem (voiced by the late Alan Rickman) leads her to a transporting Looking Glass and a way back to a magical world where chess pieces seem more alive than Anne Hathaway’s White Queen.
Alice’s pal Mad Hatter is actually Sad Hatter — he’s dying, but finds a clue that his family might not have died in an inferno caused by the Jabberwocky. Alice hijacks a time-traveling Chronosphere from Time (Sacha Baron Cohen), an eccentric guy with a penchant for clockwork chic, but every time she uses it, she destroys the Grand Clock a little more.
Linda Woolverton’s script is filled with time clichés and painful puns — the Mad Hatter calling one of the Red Queen’s vegetable minions “absolutely radishing ” is particularly abhorrent. Worse, the plot presents Alice as an accidental antagonist of sorts, since her selfish decisions lead to many of the obstacles she faces.
She definitely has a gentle nature when it comes to the Hatter, and Depp takes him to a nonsensical level in Looking Glass. The character who most balances wacky and grounded aspects is Time — Cohen pumps the brakes on his usual over-the-top tenden- cies and turns him into one of the film’s few wise men. Time also gets the coolest special effects, with his steampunk-influenced sidekicks and fantastical gearfilled kingdom.
He also has a girlfriend of sorts with the big-headed Red Queen. Carter is phenomenal as the qua- si-villainess, who gets an origin story and owns every moment she’s on screen. From the heartshaped lipstick to the occasional “Off with his/ her/their head!” shouts, she’s a bright spot in a Wonderland missing wonder.
While Alice yearns to do “six impossible things before break- fast,” crafting a satisfying sequel is not in the cards. In the end, it suffers from the same downfall as Disney’s live-action The Jungle
Book, with style burying substance. Unless a Red Queen road trip is on tap next, it might be time to retire the Looking Glasses for a while.