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Review: 'Alice Through the Looking Glass' a useless, boring cash cow

 
While the Mad Hatter was never mentioned in Lewis Carroll’s follow-up novel, here again is Johnny Depp at center stage.
While the Mad Hatter was never mentioned in Lewis Carroll’s follow-up novel, here again is Johnny Depp at center stage.
Published May 25, 2016

If Lewis Carroll couldn't dream up a decent sequel to Alice in Wonderland, what makes Disney believe it can be done?

Alice Through the Looking Glass isn't even Carroll's title for a return trip to, well, not "Wonderland," as Alice misheard, but Underland, a place now as dull and underwhelming as its name suggests. While the first movie popped with color, this one begins dishwater gray and winds up in a rust-colored slog. Nothing is curiouser than the disappearance of magic.

It's difficult to not be cynical and redundant to declare this sequel needless for anyone except accountants, considering the studio involved. But this ranks among Disney's most shameless shirkings of its responsibility to creatively entertain, in order to pursue profits.

The movie abandons nearly all of Carroll's ideas except the looking glass, chess pieces coming to life and a Humpty Dumpty cameo. Everything else cobbled from focus group lore by screenwriter Linda Woolverton insults the author's imagination.

While the Mad Hatter was never mentioned by name in Carroll's follow-up novel, here again is Johnny Depp at center stage, doing his psychotic Carrot Top routine. Mr. Hatter has daddy issues, in the perverse way Disney loves rattling kids by shattering family units.

Alice (Mia Wasikowska, looking more obligated than invested in the role) is called back to Underland by Absolem, now a blue butterfly. Absolem marks the final performance by the late Alan Rickman, albeit only in voice for perhaps a half-dozen lines. Alice must pull the Hatter out of a possibly fatal depression, brought on by Jabberwocky slaying his family in Part 1.

Her solution involves time travel, a hoary plot device illustrated by director James Bobin (The Muppets) as shoot-the-curl surfing in a steampunk gyroscope called the Chronosphere. That gadget is property of villainous Time (Sacha Baron Cohen, fitfully amusing), whose minions suspiciously behave like Minions from another franchise. No time pun is left unturned, as minutes pass like hours.

But wait, Helena Bonham Carter's screeching Red Queen tested okay with audiences, so Bobin needs something for her to do. Let's have her also coveting the Chronosphere, then toss in an origins story and sibling rivalry with the White Queen (Anne Hathaway). Meanwhile, Alice gets nudged to the edges of her own movie, and Wasikowska appears down with that.

Aside from bookend displays of real-world backbone, this Alice is a more passive fantasy traveler than before. The role mostly calls for expressing pleasure at remaking Underland acquaintances, and concern about their future. She has, in Hatter vernacular, lost much of her muchness, taking a fine actor down with her.

As its storylines converge, Alice Through the Looking Glass becomes a sensory endurance test, slathering the screen with gaudy CGI while Danny Elfman cranks up the musical whimsy. There must be a better way of portraying the stoppage of time than a Frozen stunt with dirty snow, amid set designs cribbed from Hugo.

Time doesn't get the last word but the wisest ones in Alice Through the Looking Glass, advising Alice to never come back. Not even Carroll went to a dried-up well three times.

Contact Steve Persall at spersall@tampabay.com or (727) 893-8365. Follow @StevePersall.