Alice Through The Looking Glass

From the poster it's hard to tell the "Alice through the Looking Glass" from its predecessor, "Alice in Wonderland." Everything is colorful, there are a slew of whacky characters, and Johnny Depp's Mad Hatter is front and center - as usual. Even the trailers still make you feel like you're watching the first movie, so I'm half wondering if anyone is going to show up, because the sequel just seems like a re-release of the first one.

Well, it's not, but it's also unnecessary.

I'll admit, I loved the first "Alice" directed by Tim Burton. It was goofy, bright and fun. At the same time, I really wasn't clamoring for a sequel, despite knowing there were other Lewis Carroll books to adapt. The problem with the new film is exactly what I expected would be the problem: There are no characters to truly care about, but there is an overabundance of special effects and too much noise. (Which is sort of how all the big blockbusters are these days.) While the film is fitfully entertaining, it is when the characters are in the real world, or take a second to breathe, that it comes to life. When it's catapulting itself through the world of Wonderland, it's just sort of numbing.

The plot of the sequel is relatively simple. Alice (Mia Wasikowska) is now a sea captain and guiding her crew through dangerous waters and a year-long expedition. When she returns home, she finds that her mother's home now belongs to her old suitor Hamish (Leo Bill). In order to get it back, he tells her she has to sell her deceased father's boat, "The Wonder." Not one to take these offers lightly, Alice escapes to a deep part of his house, and just when she is about to be cornered a magical mirror appears to her and she escapes back into Wonderland. But why now?

Well, The Mad Hatter (Depp) is in a bit of a depression because of a family issue that occurred years before. Alice realizes that in order to save The Hatter, she must find his parents and allow them to heal their relationship. This means going to see Time (Sacha Baron Cohen) in order to get a Chronosphere that will allow her to travel back into the past so she can change The Hatter's future.

Playing like a curioser and curioser version of "A Christmas Carol," the film follows Alice's travels to various points in The Hatter's life to discover what actually happened between him and his family. But at the same time, she uncovers the truth about the war between sisters Queen of Hearts Iracebeth (Helena Bonham Carter) and Queen Mirana (Anne Hathaway). Along the way, Alice runs into old friends like Tweedledee and Tweedledum (a very CGI Matt Lucas), and her animal buddies The Cheshire Cat (Stephen Fry), Bayard the dog (Timothy Spall), hare Thackery (Paul Whitehouse), mouse Mallymkun (Barbara Windsor), and the White Rabbit McTwisp (Michael Sheen).

There's nothing terribly "wrong" with Alice's latest adventure, but there is a sort of whimsy that is lacking. It's a beautiful-looking film; however, it's so full of CGI that it can feel like you're watching a cartoon with live actors popping in from time to time. Director James Bobin ("Muppets Most Wanted") takes over for Tim Burton, working from a script by Linda Woolverton (Disney's "Beauty and the Beast"), and while there are a lot of good messages here, it still seems to lose its way. Is this a story about The Mad Hatter, or is it really about the Queen Sisters? Alice is just a conduit for these stories to play out, but aside from fixing what she screws up, she doesn't do much other than observe. She's plucky, for sure, but not much of a character.

There's lots of talk of female empowerment (which I'm all for), but at this point it's a theme that seems to be dominating the Disney marketplace. Unless there's a new twist to it, it's starting to get repetitive. Don't get me wrong - "yay equality!" - but it's getting redundant for Disney when every cartoon and film repeats the same ideology - no matter how good that ideology is.

As for the actors, Depp is doing his usual madcap character shtick, but with makeup that is painted on his face so heavily it gets distracting. Helena Bonham Carter's Queen is as grating as ever. Somehow, she has made a potentially amusing character super-annoying. The fact her head is big and her lips are made to look eternally pursed isn't funny after the first extreme close up. After the thirtieth, it gets eye-rolling.

Hathaway continues to prove to everyone that she's acting and here, she earnestly channels Glinda the Good Witch to the point of silliness. Her problem is, you can always see her acting and making character choices rather than embodying the character itself. At least Carter actually embodies the Queen of Hearts. Hathaway takes the role so seriously I wouldn't be surprised if she went Method and continued to be in character when the cameras weren't rolling.

Wasikowska is fine, but there is a blandness to the actress that works better in moody period pieces, and not so much in wild and crazy big-budget extravaganzas. She's good, but you're not going to remember her performance. Cohen as Time is fairly memorable and has a few good bits, but his character is sort of confusing. (Is he good or bad?)

All in all, Alice's latest adventure in Wonderland is hit or miss. When she slows down and we get into the emotional parts of the story, it works. When she takes a backseat to Disney's need to dazzle us, the looking glass doesn't reflect much back but color and noise.