Alice Through the Looking Glass

Alice Through the Looking Glass was cool to see in the theater, but I wouldn’t recommend it outside of that. It could’ve been a lot better. Aesthetically it alternates between gorgeous and freakish; the plot’s largely contradictory and uncompelling; the dialgoue is trite; and Mia doesn’t quite have the presence to pull off the Alice they’re trying to portray.

Roeper warned me that Alice Through the Looking Glass wasn’t going to be any good, but I didn’t listen. It looked pretty, so I wanted to see it. It was pretty. Although the Hatter and the Red Queen looked really freaky and screwed with the aesthetic appeal for a lot of the movie. Alice’s outfits were really cool, though. I loved that crazy thing that she wore to the ball.

The whole premise of the movie didn’t sit right with me. First of all, Alice should’ve believed the Hatter when he said his family was still alive. And then it just seemed wrong for her to be stealing the chronosphere. I didn’t like how instantly everything in Underland started falling apart as soon as she had it – obviously she shouldn’t have been messing with it.

Time was a weird character. I don’t know if it was Sacha’s fault or not, but I just couldn’t get a handle on him, and I didn’t like it.

Alice was a horrible captain. Or at least Mia completely failed to pull off acting like she was powerful/commanding enough to be one. The opening scene with the ships was so flat. I thought maybe it was going to be a dream sequence or she was already in the insane asylum or something. No one would’ve let her be a captain back then, anyway. I couldn’t figure out why the crew was following her orders. She didn’t act like she should have any authority at all.

I didn’t like how it seemed like the only option was to sell the boat, and then when she was willing to do that, magically there was the other option of “let’s start our own trading company.” The whole plot was poorly done. They could’ve done so much better with the plot and the writing. So many of the lines were just so cliché.

I did like going back in time and seeing the characters at different ages, and learning things like how they got stuck at one minute until tea time, and when the Queen’s head started getting so big. The time puns didn’t bother me as much as they did Roeper. I liked that they didn’t spend too much time in the “real world” - just enough to give you a break from Underland. It was hard to care about what was going on a lot of the time; it wasn’t terribly compelling.

The part where everything was turning to rust was exciting, though. It was cool when they showed everything completely frozen. The CG in general was good, although I guess any parts that looked “cartoon-y” kind of blended in since you’re not in the real world, anyway. I didn’t like how mean the Queen was to Time. Maybe she’ll be a little bit nicer now that Mirana apologized. I bet her head would get smaller if she would stop being so upset about everything all the time.

I’m glad I saw it in the theater. It’s probably not worth watching any other way. You’re really just there for the spectacle. It could’ve been so much better. Despite all the problems, though, the setting is so fanciful you can’t help but like it at least a bit. The song they played for the end credits was terrible, though.