My eyes just water at the idea of the rendering time required to produce these pixelated colourful digital worlds. The countless hours spent in front of computer screens getting paid minimum wage to produce these lush visuals. If only they had spent even half this amount of time on an actual story for the sequel to the 2009 hit, Alice In Wonderland, or as I like to call this one, “Bloated Johnny Depp Looking Like A Carrot-Top Drag Queen Featuring Alice.”
Alice Through The Looking Glass follows the adventures of Alice who returns to Underland to help The Mad Hatter find his long lost, quite possibly dead family. In order to do this she must steal the Chronosphere from Time himself, played by Sasha Baron Cohen who seems to be doing an accent somewhere in between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Werner Hertzog. Essentially chaos ensues, Alice does a lot of green-screen Ninja Warrioring and a flimsy pretext for an origin story for The Mad Hatter and The Red Queen fills up the one hour and fifty-three minute runtime.
Now the Tim Burton original was a breakout hit making over a billion dollars worldwide back in 2010. To be honest, a lot of that success was probably riding on the coattails of Avatar’s resurgence of 3D cinema and the pulling power of Johnny Depp at the time - however, I don’t remember anyone really clamouring for a sequel after it was released. Six years later, with the interest in 3D drying up, Johnny Depp’s stocks at an all-time low and no Tim Burton, this film really struggles to capture any of the heart that was in the original. Sure it looks great, but it certainly doesn’t feel great.
Probably the biggest issue with the film is the story. It doesn’t hold enough weight to support even the key characters of Alice, The Mad Hatter, The Red Queen and Time. The film features all of the original cast from the first film, however they serve no purpose other than to remind you that this is a film set in the world of Lewis Carroll’s original stories. Those hoping for a great villain from Sacha Baron Cohen will be sorely disappointed, mostly because despite the great steam-punk design, he serves no threat at all. But this is not Cohen’s fault, it’s just that his character has so little to do, and this can be said for all of the cast. Helena Bonham Carter gives it her all in the film along with Mia Wasikowska - but ultimately they are just rehashing stuff we already know. Anne Hathaway gives the typical Anne Hathaway performance, and it is good to hear the voice of the late great Alan Rickman, if it is only for a fleeting moment.
Of course, as always with a film starring Johnny Depp, your ability to enjoy this film will entirely depend on your tolerance of “wacky” Johnny Depp performances. If you’re a fan then you’re in for a treat. If you’ve grown tired of it over the years then maybe give this one a miss because it is more of the same with Depp lisping and switching accents and doing silly talks along with silly walks in his usual unapologetic way. Fun fact though, you know your career has hit rock bottom when 47 year old Rhys Ifans is being asked to play the father of Johnny Depp who is 53 this year.
For a film that theme is the importance of time, it’s very telling that you will spend most of the film looking at your watch, seeing the ticking clock slow down to a snails’ pace. Granted the film is firmly targeted at little kids, but even they may feel that the film is overly long and a little boring compared to the other films on offer at this time of year.
Alice Through The Looking Glass gets One and a Half out of Five Stars (or at least One and a Half out Five grave concerns for the well-being of the poor graphic designers sitting in front of those servers waiting for the f*cking film to render - I hope they have a good union.)
No comments:
Post a Comment