Disney's bastardization of classic children's literature reaches its nadir with "Alice Through the Looking Glass," a headache inducing menage of Lewis Carroll's beloved Underland characters tossed into a cacophonous tempest of family squabbles and lessons learned. The intended message of burying hatchets and savoring what little time we enjoy on Earth gets lost in a swirl of busyness that fails to connect on any level.
More cash grab than art, the new "Alice" arrives six years after Tim Burton's hallucinogenic "Alice in Wonderland." Like its predecessor, this new "Alice," directed by James Bobin ("The Muppets"), is devoted to the Fernando Lamas mantra that it's better to look good than be good.
And, to be sure, it looks mahvelous. But the story is dull and choppy, largely because most of it emanates not from Carroll's imagination, but from the mangled vision of "Alice in Wonderland" screenwriter Linda Woolverton.
In her defense, Carroll's sequel to "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," didn't leave Woolverton with an easy template to follow. The source is too episodic and unwieldy (a lot of chess references) to be rendered into a coherent movie, so she does what she must, which is to make stuff up, just like the writers on the Mouse's insufferable "Once Upon a Time." And she works overtime to please her synergetic bosses by sampling bits from other Disney franchises like "Star Wars," "Pirates of the Caribbean," "Oz the Great and Powerful" and, of course, the royal sisters from "Frozen," represented quite annoyingly by Anne Hathaway's White Queen and Helena Bonham Carter's Red Queen.
The results are disjointed, and there's an air of desperation in the over eagerness to please the masses by throwing in a bit of everything. And these come-ons are unleashed at such a frantic pace there's little time to digest them or the characters, all so underwritten that you don't give a hoot about a one. And that includes Alice (Mia Wasikowska), who has evolved into a feminist of the sea, captaining an all-male crew aboard her father's ship, The Wonder. She's been on the brine for three years before returning home to her family. But when she steps off the boat her feet land in a quagmire, beginning with the crushing news that Mum has agreed to sell The Wonder to Alice's former -- now jilted -- betrothed, the slithery Hamish Ascot (Leo Bill).
Suddenly fraught, Alice seeks refuge in the Ascots' den, where the caterpillar-turned-butterfly, Absolem (the late Alan Rickman, to whom the film is dedicated), lures her inside the mirror and back into Underland. But things aren't much better there. The Hatter (Johnny Depp, obnoxious as ever and caked in gray kabuki makeup) is sinking deep into a deadly depression over the loss of his family. To save him, Alice must confront Time, a fastidious cyborg (played by Sacha Baron Cohen, hamming it up) and "borrow" his transporting Chronosphere to travel back years to save the Hatter's kin.
In the blink of an eye and several million dollars in special effects, "Looking Glass" evolves from a sequel into a prequel, allowing us -- whether we like it or not -- to learn the origin stories of the two Queens and the Hatter. We also spy dear friends Tweedledee and Tweedledum (Matt Lucas), the Cheshire Cat (Stephen Fry), Bayard (Timothy Spall) and the other tea party regulars in their formative years. And that would be fun, if Bobin took time to develop their stories instead of obsessing on overdone special effects.
By the time the end mercifully nears, you can feel the onset of PTSD. But you also feel empathy. Not for the characters, but for so many -- particularly Rickman -- wasting their talent on something so trivial. Only Cohen emerges unscathed, and that's largely because he ad-libs most of the time. He also benefits from the film's one truly great effect, which is Time's "Hugo"-like lair, which is a steampunk dream of gears, gadgets and gizmos highlighted by hundreds of dangling pocket watches, each corresponding to an Underland resident whose life Time can end whenever he sees fit. You also can count on Woolverton to exhaust every "time" pun she can. Although, I must admit, some are kind of funny. But most are grating and indicative of a film that is anything but a magic Wonderland.
"Alice Through the Looking Glass"
Cast includes Mia Wasikowska, Johnny Depp, Anne Hathaway, Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter.
(PG for fantasy action/peril and some language.)
Grade: C-
