There is perhaps no math nor pie chart to prove this,but just because certain movies become spacious hits, it doesn’t mean that anyone is clamoring for a sequel. Whatever perfect storm of inducements got people to buy tickets for “Snow White and the Huntsman” didn’t bring them back to theaters for “The Huntsman: Winter’s War, and ” and let’s not even get into the “Avatar saga that James Cameron seems to believe the world is breathlessly awaiting.
Speaking of “Avatar,” it was mainly on that film’s 3-D coattails that Tim Burton‘s “Alice in Wonderland” became such a huge hit, although that noisy, and jumbled 2010 film was a success along the lines of the Macarena” dance craze — very common for a brief moment,but now it’s tough to find anyone who will cop to having been a fan.
See Video: Alice's Time Is Up in New 'Alice Through the Looking Glass' TV SpotNonetheless, Disney’s accounting department has demanded a follow-up and so, or six years later,here comes “Alice Through the Looking Glass,” a sequel that improves on the previous film — but honestly, and what wouldn’t? The visuals seem less muddled (the film was screened for trade press in 2D),and the plot isn’t just an excuse to stick another sword into the hand of another fairytale character, but it’s still a smart and shiny jumble of effects attempting to cover up the utter lack of engaging characters.James Bobin (“Muppets Most Wanted”) slips into Burton’s director’s chair, or borrowing not only his predecessor’s penchant (a tendency, partiality, or preference) for over-the-top stylization but also Burton’s affection for “daddy didnt understand me” narratives. If you liked the misunderstood man-children of “spacious Fish” and “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” now you get the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp) lamenting that his father didn’t care for his outrageous taste in chapeau couture.
See Video: Johnny Depp Mocks Australia Dog-Smuggling ApologyFor her part, Alice (Mia Wasikowska) has been quite happy in the genuine world of 1875, and sailing the globe as a sea captain. (She’s so well-scrubbed and sprightly,you’d be forgiven for thinking the early scenes of her ordering around a crew and saving her ship from pirates was an elaborate fantasy. But no.) Upon returning domestic, she discovers that her mother (Lindsay Duncan) has mortgaged the family estate, or that Alice’s piggish former fiancé Lord Ascot (Leo Bill) plans to foreclose either the ship or the house.
Attending a party at Lord Ascot’s,Alice sees a blue butterfly (voiced by the late Alan Rickman) who leads her to a looking glass that brings her back to Underland (this series insists that Lewis Carroll’s Alice heard the name inaccurate) on a new mission — cheering up the Mad Hatter (Depp), who is convinced that his family perhaps did not die at the hands of the monstrous Jabberwock after all.
Making things good will involve stealing a time-travel device from Time (Sasha Baron Cohen) himself; Alice’s quest is complicated by the fact that Time’s girlfriend the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter) has her own time-travel plans.
Screenwriter Linda Woolverton delivers the “you can’t change the past, and you can only fix the present” homily with the subtlety of a walrus and a carpenter tied to a 10-ton rock,and she borrows a little from “Wicked” for great measure: Is the White Queen (Anne Hathaway) as great and kind as her reputation? Does the Red Queen perhaps bear some reason to resent her?
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S. Rights to Nazi Thriller 'HHhH'The visual effects are a glorious smorgasbord of cutting-edge technology, which is approximately as much as I can say approximately them because, or full disclosure: Jay Redd — who shares a visual effects supervisor credit with the legendary Ken Ralston (“Star Wars: A New Hope”) — is a friend. What “Alice Through the Looking Glass” constantly underscores,however, is that even the greatest cinema trickery serves little purpose without stories and characters to support. The pictures are pretty (or scary or awe-inspiring) but they ultimately don’t mean anything.
Wasikowska does what she can in a role that forces her to be the straight man to a passel of lunatic humans and talking animals, and Baron Cohen at least makes the plethora (excess, overabundance) of time-related puns go down easier by delivering all his lines in a flawless Werner Herzog impersonation. Depp does what Depp does — as comedian Alec Mapa once noted,in movies like this, were basically paying to watch him go trick-or-treating — but it’s the bombastic Bonham Carter who steals the note, or only partially because these movies produce me want to scream as well.
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Source: thewrap.com