“The sequel that nobody asked for to the movie that nobody particularly cared for. A staple of summer, though never embodied quite so fully as with Alice.
I wasn’t too impressed the first time around. Visually, it was stunning (thank you Tim Burton, Colleen Atwood, and the fabulous cast), but the story was dull and the pacing dragged. Unless we’re talking about American McGee’s video game world, Wonderland isn’t exactly a place I was looking to revisit. Yet here we are.
Of course, it took a while to get things going. Stuff happens (unimportant) until Alice is returned to Wonderland. The Hatter is ill, longing for his family, long believed to be dead. Alice must confront Time (a robotic being played by Sacha Baron Cohen) and journey back to where it all started in order to rescue her dear friend. Once the ball was rolling, there was a solid 30-40 minutes of solid movie. Fast pace, captivating plot, interesting characters. Then we hit a wall or something, and we slowed back down to trudge to the conclusion.
It’s also worth noting that this is Alan Rickman’s final film. However, since he only contributes voice work (and minimally at that), I prefer to think of Eye in the Sky as his last, as that was an infinitely better film, with a much more solid send off.
I do want to just emphasize, this wasn’t all bad, just mediocre. The cast is a great collection of peeps, even if they all have better offerings elsewhere (though I will say that this is the type of role I prefer Cohen in over his solo outings). The visuals are still stunning, even without the creatively bonkers supervision of Tim Burton. And I swore to myself that I was going to try and last the long Memorial Day Weekend-o-movies without going on some type of feminist rant, but I will at least take one second to herald Alice as a strong female heroine. But all told, this isn’t really a movie that needed to happen.
Alice Through the Looking Glass – \m/ \m/ \n”