Alice Through the Looking Glass | Mia Wasikowska's feisty heroine is back for more feats of derring-do

Alice in Alice Through the Looking Glass Mia Wasikowska
(Image credit: Courtesy of Disney)

Disney’s 2010 Alice in Wonderland was dazzling to look at but weak on plot and the same is even truer of disappointing sequel Alice Through the Looking Glass.

Departing still further from Lewis Carroll’s original tales, the film sends feisty, proto-feminist Alice (again played by Australian actress Mia Wasikowska) back to the surreal world of Wonderland, where her old friend the Mad Hatter (an overly hammy Johnny Depp) is wasting away from sadness at the loss of his family.

Putting things right turns out to be a very convoluted affair. Alice gets to perform further acts of pluck and bravado after pinching a time-travelling gizmo, the Chronosphere, from Sacha Baron-Cohen’s half-human, half-mechanical Time.

Along the way, we learn why Helena Bonham Carter’s homicidal Red Queen and Anne Hathaway’s fey White Queen are such enemies, and reacquaint ourselves with, among others, gormless twins Tweedledum and Tweedledee (Matt Lucas), the Cheshire Cat (Stephen Fry), and caterpillar-turned-butterfly Absolem (silkily voiced by the late Alan Rickman, to whom the film is dedicated).

Compared with Carroll’s brilliantly topsy-turvy logic, however, it all seems very muddled, and the whimsical charm of the books is definitely missing.

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Certificate PG. Runtime 113 mins. Director James Bobin

Alice Through The Looking Glass out on 3D Blu-RayTM, Blu-RayTM and DVD Digital Download 3rd October (©2016 Disney).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3IWwnNe5mc

Jason Best

A film critic for over 25 years, Jason admits the job can occasionally be glamorous – sitting on a film festival jury in Portugal; hanging out with Baz Luhrmann at the Chateau Marmont; chatting with Sigourney Weaver about The Archers – but he mostly spends his time in darkened rooms watching films. He’s also written theatre and opera reviews, two guide books on Rome, and competed in a race for Yachting World, whose great wheeze it was to send a seasick film critic to write about his time on the ocean waves. But Jason is happiest on dry land with a classic screwball comedy or Hitchcock thriller.