Alice Through The Looking Glass is technically a sequel to Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, but Burton only produced this entry. This second entry resumes slightly later than where the last movie left off. Alice has returned from maritime adventures in Asia only to discover herself in a new predicament at home and in Wonderland. She is in danger of losing her father’s ship and her shares in the company so she escapes to Wonderland only to discover that her friend, Hatter, has fallen ill. She is willing to do the impossible to save Hatter, but will she endanger existence itself? I think that all of us know the answer to that question, but sadly I don’t think that he is worth causing an apocalypse though I am delighted that the movie offered the unexpected prospect of end times.
If I were not a completist, I would not have watched Alice Through The Looking Glass because I was not a fan of the first movie. I think that I’m tired of Burton’s brand of weirdness. Because my expectations were so low, I actually enjoyed the second entry more than the first. I still would not recommend that you watch it, but it has some narrative resolutions that were either hurried clumsy lessons tacked on to tie everything in a neat bow or reflected that what preceded was actually more artfully crafted than the execution initially indicated. When the movie ended, I was not left horrified by the titular character’s happy ending.
Alice Through The Looking Glass had major lessons that resonated. Do the impossible and find a way to reconcile with your family without sacrificing your dreams and while remaining true to yourself. We live in an age in which it is really easy to cut yourself off from people for valid reasons, but there are less extreme ways of maintaining boundaries and the relationship. This nuance requires a certain amount of creativity. Alice has to choose between her career and her mother’s welfare/expectations. I am not invested in Alice’s idea of adventure and often roll my eyes at her antics, specifically adventure for the sake of adventure leaves me cold as opposed to an overarching principle, but the idea of others imposing their ideas on how she should live her life horrified me. My instinctual, emotional reaction was far more extreme and less understanding than Alice’s even if my actions in real life lean more towards the practical and embrace the more conventional path.
While the feminist message in Alice in Wonderland felt hollow and lacked intersectionality, Alice Through The Looking Glass was less problematic because it stayed in its region, Wonderland and Great Britain, and was restricted to issues of gender norms and veneers of respectability. Her mother, played by the magnificent Lindsay Duncan, chides Alice, “You can’t just make things however you want them to.” Duncan manages to infuse this line with wistfulness, jealousy and love. There is an implicit generational suppression by older people of younger people. They maintain the status quo that does not benefit them out of a desire to protect their children and as a spiteful reaction—if they could not live freely, then why should the children. Parents are viewed as full human beings. Their children act as painful reminders of the parents’ dreams that were suppressed. Their reactions are mixed with pride and anger at the prospect that their children may escape the same gravity that made them into adults. This subplot is more powerful than the entire movie and is sadly diffused throughout so I cannot isolate sections that you can watch and be spared the rest of the frenetic spectacle.
Alice Through The Looking Glass missed an opportunity that descended into hackneyed trope to explore the idea of insanity versus being different and unconventional. In this particular cinematic adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s character, Alice always enters Wonderland when she is at a personal crossroads. While we are supposed to empathize with her and not agree that she is crazy, unlike many women in media who are wrongfully characterized as crazy because the mainstream cannot handle such focus or theories from a woman (The Killing, Buffy the Vampire Slayer versus Fox Mulder of The X-Files), I don’t think that it is unreasonable to question her mental health. She is a bit manic and her behavior actually does demonstrate a danger of harm to herself and others. I feel as if most movies don’t offer a textured depiction that balances the real world need for treatment of mental health problems and the derogatory attempt by society to categorize iconoclasts as crazy. Movies are far too comfortable with dismissing any mental health treatments as unnecessary and guides viewers to resist all treatment.
It is unlikely that Alice Through The Looking Glass borrowed time travel elements from Project Almanac even though it was released after the teen found footage movie, but I enjoyed how both movies explored the same phenomenon of what happens if past and present selves encounter each other. I normally find Sacha Baron Cohen’s brand of comedy off-putting and mean-spirited, but I actually enjoyed his performance as Time. I know that I’m not the only reviewer who suspects that he is doing an impression of Werner Herzog, but it works, and his character’s journey, which initially seemed as two-dimensional and one note as the other characters in Wonderland, outshone his co-stars as his emotional development reflected a depth that the others lacked.
Alice Through The Looking Glass is also the last film that features Alan Rickman whose death began the apocalypse in our own timeline along with David Bowie and Prince. If you are a Rickman fan, I would not recommend that you watch this movie solely for him since he is not on screen, but is the voice of one of the characters, Absalom, who was a caterpillar and turns into a butterfly at the end of Alice in Wonderland, and this character does not appear often during the course of the film.
Alice Through The Looking Glass is for kids. I was not a kid when I was a kid, and this movie would not have appealed to me then. I still preferred it to Alice in Wonderland and glimpsed more brief promising moments in the sequel that would appeal to the adults in the audience. Visually it is completely unappealing and garish to me. I wonder if the movie could have been better if it completely departed from Burton’s original interpretation and struck out on its own merits.