Review of Alice Through the Looking Glass (2016) by Meritcoba — 04 Jun 2016

Story-telling fascinates me hence I dissect movies and there is certainly something to be learned here.

At the core the story is a conflict between family members: Alice and her mother; the Mad Hatter and his father; the white queen and her sister the red queen. Rooted as these conflicts are in the past, they shape the present and the future. It is the past and thus it cannot be altered.

Or can it?

Well, Alice gains that ability by stealing a time traveling machine from Time himself. Thus she whirls back through the ages to undo the past and thus alter the future. Time travelling is fascinating as it allows for all kinds of complications and if the movie had kept to that one story-line it might have allowed for more. But someone discarded the rule that less is more and swung hundred and eighty degrees about: we get more. And with each added sub plot, cast member and side trip there is less to each of them.

The whole cast of the first movie, for instance, returns in this movie, but few have a substantial role to play. Yet there is at least one time consuming pointless scene with them. There is a scene in which Alice jumps back through the mirror to the real world, gets locked up in a mental institute, escapes and jumps back through the mirror to wonderland that could have been left out as it adds nothing to the story. There is James Harcourt, whom we suspect to have been cast as a love interest, but at least that development didn't survive the cutting table, although he is still in it.

With so many wasteful time eaters there aren't enough minutes in the hour to develop anything so finally the tale gets to be wrapped up with kiss-and-make-up solutions sprinkled with in your face moral lessons, the most atrocious of which is the one that solves the issues between the white queen and the red. All the latter wants is for the first to say sorry! The whole first movie thus is caused by one small incident that could have been solved by an excuse. The root of all evil is a lie about a stolen piece of cake.

This is the kind of 'Kindergarten'(quoting Time from the movie) psychology that is used to propel the story and so morally bankrupts it. Because what is all the fuss about if you can make it go away by a kiss, a cuddle, a smile or a pat on the shoulder?

But what is the final lesson of the story? When in dire straits just wonder the problem away, for no reality induced limitations can stop your will from overcoming obstacles. Therefore your suffering is caused by your own lack of imagination. I bet all the economists and politicians in the world haven't thought of that one: they can learn a thing or two from Walt Disney.

But wait a minute... Isn't not the upshot of the whole movie that one can not alter the past, but only learn from it? So Alice's message that one can do anything if one just let their imagination run wild is actually at odds with the lesson of the movie. What gives?

But look how bad this really gets. Her attempt to save one man almost undoes the whole universe. She runs wild with her imagination and wonderland faces disaster. And nobody, except Wilkins, Time's butler, notices it. Alice is as dumb as Time makes her out to be, and so are all her friends, who fail to see how dangerous she has become. The only thing she cares about is her petty feelings: she feels bad because her friend Hatter feels bad about his dad. And fixing this takes precedence above anything else: including wrecking existence. But all hurrah her at the end anyway instead of locking her up as the true menace to society. The movie ultimately defeats its own message.

But there is an even bigger crime. Alice movies are, I think, feasts of creative nonsense and subtile mirth, but this movie is so far removed from any of it. It is bone dry with the exception of Time, played by Sacha Baron Cohen. As a matter of fact, the movie tries to infuse reason into unreason. Explaining Alice and the world she is in is the death knell of the story. "Why so serious?" says the Joker. Why indeed?

This movie works on a superficial level. It is so overburdened with the superfluous and the trite that it gets undone and neither the cast nor the cgi can save it. It even fails to hold to its own moral lessons. Ultimately it will fade in time as on any level it is just a 'Kindergarten' movie.