I've been away for a moment, not written since my rant about Spider-Kid, and I have somehow managed to watch two films over the weekend, the first of which we speak of now.
TITLE: Alice: Through the Looking Glass
SUMMARY:
Alice returns to the whimsical world of Wonderland and travels back in time to save the Mad Hatter.
PERSONAL CRITIQUE:
There now, that doesn't sound so bad does it? Alice returns to Wonderland and must travel back in time to save the Hatter...see, makes perfect sense. Wait- no, it doesn't really. For starters, for a movie that proclaims nothing is impossible, Ms. Kingsleigh is certainly faced with several impossible features of Underland. Why saving the Hatter from madness? It is the very essence of his being, the whole plot of the movie is that the Hatter is becoming...sane...due to depression, or something, over the supposed loss of his dead of family...or their survival...whatever! So Alice must travel back in time to save the Hatter's family, despite constant assurances by Time himself that you cannot change the past (though you might learn something from it).
There was something off, disappointingly, about our center-piece, the good Hatter, Depp's character. It was...odd, his voice seemed force and the character shifts that should have been rampant seemed almost methodical. Alice is still Alice though, and for that matter most of the characters seem their natural selves, except Hatter, which I suppose is fitting as he is the key character who is changing.
There are also questions about scripting of the two movies that are called out, such as the idea in the first movie that Alice had been to Underland before, yet in Through the Looking Glass everyone proclaims that Alice had not been in Wonderland's past, so there was no danger of her running into herself...yes, I suppose that theoretically there was no reason for her to encounter herself at those specific points, but to say that she had not been there in the past was just plain wrong!
Still, the movie ignites a certain childish delight, while illustrating its points with Burton's dark handiwork, so I'd have to find it at least somewhat agreeable in it's art style and overarching "She's gone mad!" feeling.
RATING:
Nine out of Ten mad hatters would give this movie Two Paper Hats, out of Five.
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