Alice in Wonderland: Through The Looking Glass - Movie Review
- James Harden
- Jun 4, 2016
- 3 min read
Puns. Puns everywhere. Ain’t nobody got TIME for that (you may understand this in a bit).
Well, actually, I had a lot of time for Alice’s latest adventures and its many quips. Despite the very public failure of the movie in its opening week and the very large and unfortunately timed, for Disney at least, Johnny Depp scandal (of which I am keeping my opinions to myself as this blog will stay about reviews) I enjoyed this movie muchly. As such, I feel people need to look beyond what has happened and enjoy the movie. Many, many people have poured their hearts and souls into this production and people should not be turned away by one star’s off-screen antics, especially one who doesn’t feature a huge amount. Which leads me to the plot.
The plot is not its strongest point. Alice escapes back into Underland and then has to travel back in time to attempt to save the Mad Hatter. Straight way, I feel anything that involves time travel is a dangerous area as time travel itself is a paradox: if you go back in time to change an event, then any changes to that event remove the future need for you to head back and change the event in the first place, so you never would have left in the first place. *MIND BLOWN*
Anyway, let’s pick up the pieces of our minds and proceed. The reason behind the time travel is related to the Hatter’s family, which in turn is related to the White Queen and Queen of Hearts’s childhood. I will spare the details because I am spoiler-free reviewer (at least my intent is to be), but the links between all the events are weak. As weak as a storyline of me attempting to kill the Queen because I wore green socks three weeks ago, which only happened because, once the month before, it was cloudy.
However, there are morals in the storyline for the kids. The themes of lying and its effects and attempts to change the past are addressed and there are often hints of an equality message too. There are often references to the fact that Alice is a woman and that she shouldn’t be doing certain things and, of course, she proves them wrong time and time again. Go feminism! All men and women are equal! At least Disney are sending positive messages out through the rest of the film, despite the Hatter’s real life misbehaviour.
The effects are good and reminiscent of the previous instalment but are lacking Tim Burton’s touch to make them extra special. The phrase ‘visually flamboyant’ does somehow spring to mind though. Watching this in 3D probably helped with that.
The humour is one of Alice in Wonderland’s strengths in my eyes. As a great lover of a good laugh and particularly of puns, much appealed to me in these areas. Most of the puns centre around the character of Time himself, who is by far my favourite part of the production and is brought to life delightfully by Sacha Baron Cohen. Other characters worth mentioning are the White Queen (purely because I have a soft spot for Anne Hathaway), the Red Queen (because Helen Bonham Carter is just fantastic) and the Blue Caterpillar (R.I.P Alan Rickman, you will be missed). In fact, this is Alan Rickman’s last movie role and so it should be treasured by all.
To summarise, I enjoyed this film and recommend people see it. At the end of the day this is all my opinion and I feel that the contributions of so many people are being unappreciated because of what one man has done (rightly or wrongly) in his private life. The plot may be weak but that didn’t overly affect the joy I felt watching it unfold. I’ve seen better films, but I’ve also seen much worse.
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