{"id":87247,"date":"2016-05-16T13:56:12","date_gmt":"2016-05-16T12:56:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/?p=87247"},"modified":"2016-09-22T16:27:21","modified_gmt":"2016-09-22T15:27:21","slug":"alice-through-the-looking-glass-film-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/reviews\/alice-through-the-looking-glass-film-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Alice Through The Looking Glass film review"},"content":{"rendered":"

You have to wade through brutal reviews and Internet scorn to find a fan of Tim Burton\u2019s Alice In Wonderland<\/strong><\/em>, but its huge profitability made a sequel inevitable. Although most of the cast is back, Burton has hopped out of the director\u2019s chair to be replaced by The Muppets<\/strong><\/em> helmer James Bobin. Bobin has shown that he\u2019s capable of bringing beloved characters to life with joy and mischief, but can he win over the haters?<\/p>\n

Those who profoundly hated Burton\u2019s vision probably should and probably will steer clear of Bobin\u2019s follow-up. He\u2019s working from the same visual template (with a bit more Guillermo del Toro), and there\u2019s no drastic shift in the actors\u2019 performances. However, if you enjoyed this world back in 2010, or are at least intrigued by the prospect of a return, then there\u2019s enough here to justify a ticket.<\/p>\n

A year has passed since Alice (Mia Wasikowska, still excellent) stopped the Red Queen, and she\u2019s now captain of the Wonderland, the ship that belonged to her late father. When she returns from her daring voyage around the world, she finds that the foppish idiot whose marriage proposal she rejected is now her employer, and that she needs to sell him the ship in order to save her mother\u2019s house.<\/p>\n

Raging against the injustice of it all, Alice jumps through the looking glass and into Underland, where she finds the Hatter (Johnny Depp, still doing his thing) in a sorry state. He\u2019s convinced that his murdered parents are somehow still alive, and he\u2019s wasting away as no one believes him. The White Queen (Anne Hathaway) tells Alice to get time-travel device the Chronosphere from Time (Sacha Baron Cohen), but when she\u2019s forced to steal it, Alice risks destroying the future as she races to save her friend.<\/p>\n

Bobin doesn\u2019t rock the boat, but he does steady the wheel of a fairly rickety ship. It\u2019s been six years since we last saw Miss Kingsleigh, and it\u2019s great to see that writer Linda Woolverton and Bobin ensure that she\u2019s still the centre of this bustling universe. The film opens as Captain Alice boldly steers her vessel at an impossible angle through jagged rocks and escapes the pursuing enemy. She refuses to be stifled by a society that forces roles and labels onto her (she\u2019s gleefully diagnosed with female hysteria by doctor Andrew Scott), and she\u2019ll do what it takes.<\/p>\n

In this case, that means stealing from Time itself, and Cohen is on superb form. As written by Woolverton and played by Cohen, Time isn\u2019t a cartoon villain; he\u2019s a man fulfilling a vital role who\u2019s chasing Alice because she\u2019s putting the whole of Underland at risk. He\u2019s still the funniest character in the film, but his wisdom about the past and the future gives the film its heart and he\u2019s undoubtedly ATTLG\u2019s standout.<\/p>\n

However, it\u2019s far from perfect. Once Alice tumbles into Underland, the film\u2019s plodding plotting does not match the delicate way it handles its themes of loss and acceptance. There\u2019s a definite sense of wheels turning rather than wings soaring as our heroine reconnects with her friends, discovers what\u2019s wrong and sets about her mission.<\/p>\n

From then on it\u2019s a mixed bag. The plotline involving the young Hatter and his disapproving father (Rhys Ifans, all eyebrows) is much more involving than the history of the Red and White Queens\u2019 conflict, as Hathaway and Bonham Carter\u2019s heavily mannered performances start to grate. Finally, it\u2019s far too long for the substance that\u2019s actually on offer, which starts to feel like it could have been squeezed into a Doctor <\/strong>Wh<\/strong>o<\/strong><\/em> Christmas special. However, Cohen\u2019s performance is excellent, Alice is still a wonderful heroine, the visuals are stunning and there is a beating heart beneath the gloss. If you\u2019re tempted, why not take a trip?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Find out what we thought of James Bobin’s sequel, Alice Through The Looking Glass<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":87250,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"quote","meta":{"MSN_Categories":"Uncategorized","MSN_Publish_Option":false,"MSN_Is_Local_News":false,"MSN_Is_AIAC_Included":"Empty","MSN_Location":"[]","MSN_Add_Feature_Img_On_Top_Of_Post":false,"MSN_Has_Custom_Author":false,"MSN_Custom_Author":"","MSN_Has_Custom_Canonical_Url":false,"MSN_Custom_Canonical_Url":""},"categories":[2615,8],"tags":[4661],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/PR-AIW-06075Rv2.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87247"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87247\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}