Review: ‘Alice Through the Looking Glass’ and a Trippy Time Machine

Photo

The best and maybe the only way to appreciate “Alice Through the Looking Glass” is to surrender to its mad digital excess and be whirled around through time and space in a world of grotesque overabundance. This sequel to Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland,” directed by James Bobin (“The Muppets”), is so cluttered with an unwieldy mixture of Victoriana and special-effects gadgetry that every nook and cranny is crammed with stuff. There’s more to gape at than the eye can take in.

A symbol of that excess is a table set for a two-person tea party whose piles of goodies contain enough sugary calories to fell an entire Navy battalion from diabetic shock. Were it not for sweets, there would hardly be a story. Like Mr. Burton, whose original film made over $1 billion at the global box office, Mr. Bobin believes in taking opulence and extravagance to extremes.

One of the major plot threads concerns the conflict between the evil Red Queen, Iracebeth (a feisty, snapping Helena Bonham Carter), and her sister, the angelic White Queen, Mirana (a pallid Anne Hathaway). Iracebeth’s bitterness dates to a childhood incident involving cake crumbs, in which she is blamed for Mirana’s mess. The sibling feud escalates into a global conflict that at one point stops time itself. Credit the plot of that Broadway juggernaut “Wicked,” recycled for “Through the Looking Glass,” as the gift that keeps on giving. At least “Alice Through the Looking Glass” isn’t saddled with formulaic Disney songs, although as its perspective grows more cosmic, Danny Elfman’s score settles into a mood of overawed grandiosity.

What does all this have to do with Lewis Carroll? Hardly anything. It’s just an excuse on which to hang two trite overbearing fables and one amusing one. One involves a mean girl, a nice girl and forgiveness; the second a father-son schism. The third is science-fiction tomfoolery Carroll might have appreciated.

Alice has her own problems. After her seafaring adventures establishing trade routes to China on her ship, the Wonder, she returns to England to find that a rejected suitor, Hamish (Leo Bill), has maneuvered the sale of her precious ship by persuading Alice’s mother (Lindsay Duncan) to agree to a dubious deal. The liberated, adventurous Alice will from now on be trapped in stuffy Victorian England.

The discontinuity between the movie and its source material means that classic Carroll inventions like Tweedledee and Tweedledum (Matt Lucas), the Cheshire Cat (Stephen Fry), the Dormouse (Barbara Windsor) and the White Rabbit (Michael Sheen) are trotted out as members of Alice’s posse, but except for some signature visual quirks and well-cast voices, they are less characters than decorative nostalgic touchstones. Carroll’s deeply subversive, nonsensical embrace of the absurd and truly strange has been mostly painted over.

Leading the list of stars returning from Mr. Burton’s 2010 film is Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter, an eccentric neurotic loner first seen dying of a broken heart, whom he imbues with pathos and wit. He has been chronically depressed since the day his strict, conservative father scoffed at his first attempt at hat making.

His search for his parents, presumed dead at the end of the first film, ignites the third subplot in which his best friend, Alice, equipped with a whirly gyroscopic time machine called a Chronosphere, tries to alter the past to change the future.

Alice’s temporal gyrations between present and past as she dives in and out of the liquid mirror give “Through the Looking Glass” a jarring whiz-bang momentum that intensifies and accelerates as the movie hurtles along. Mia Wasikowska’s Alice Kingsleigh is a thoroughly modern young superwoman outfitted in sumptuous Victorian costumes, and the latest Disney heroine viewed through a feminist lens.

To procure the Chronosphere, Alice must steal the device from Time himself (Sacha Baron Cohen), a cranky half-human control freak with a ticking timepiece for a heart and an Austrian accent, living in a castle that suggests a giant clock.

As uninspired and warmed over as you may find the narrative strands of the movie — with a screenplay by Linda Woolverton, who also wrote “Alice in Wonderland” — its unpredictable, rampaging sense of time lends it a manic energy in keeping with Carroll’s vision of nonsensical disorder. Whirring clocks accelerate and reverse time and sometimes become stuck, conveying a demented zaniness. These are the only scenes in which the adjective “wondrous” truly applies.

Most of the other special effects belong to a chilly post-“Star Wars” aesthetic. Yes, they are spectacular enough to keep your eyes glued to the screen, even when attention wanders from the clichéd subplots. But the cumulative effect is a nonstop ride on a 21st-century roller coaster.

In the end, to paraphrase the Beatles, everyone is desperate to get back to where they once belonged. And in the Disney tradition, needless to say, everyone arrives home safe and sound.

“Alice Through the Looking Glass” is rated PG (Parental guidance suggested) for perilous sequences. Running time: 1 hour 48 minutes.