★★
Trailer: Alice Via the Wanting Glass
Alice returns to the whimsical world of Wonderland and travels again in time to save lots of the Mad Hatter.
Ever questioned concerning the troubled childhood of the Mad Hatter? Me neither, however this sequel to the reside-motion 2010 Disney model of Alice in Wonderland provides all of the backstory you might hope for, portray him as an innocently flamboyant insurgent at odds together with his straitlaced although secretly loving dad (Rhys Ifans).
That is attribute of Linda Woolverton’s politically right script, through which Alice (Mia Wasikowska) is a younger businesswoman battling the patriarchs of Victorian England – till she’s whisked again to Wonderland, the place she should rescue her previous good friend the Hatter (Johnny Depp) from Time himself (Sacha Baron Cohen, unusually subdued) whereas studying some classes about shifting on from the previous.
Whereas this Via the Wanting Glass has little to do with Lewis Carroll, it is acquainted all the identical; certainly, it appears to be made by individuals who have given up on ever having an unique thought.
The opening sea voyage is a bit Pirates of the Caribbean, the rivalry between the Purple and White Queens (Helena Bonham Carter and Anne Hathaway) recollects Frozen, the time journey adventures owe one thing to Physician Who.
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Tweedledum and Tweedledee (each performed by Matt Lucas) provide comedian aid like a few Star Wars droids; there’s even a second that means a steampunk Transformers.
The place the 2010 Alice in Wonderland was marketed as a Tim Burton movie, the credited director this time spherical is James Bobin (The Muppets). However that is the type of digital extravaganza liable to swamp the character of just about any filmmaker.
If Bobin brings something of his personal to the desk, it is a deliberate stiffness used to offset the spectacle: when he exhibits us bronze gears whirring inside Cohen’s head, there is a sense of redundancy, given that almost all of the actors come off as clockwork toys going by means of their routines.
The exception is Depp, nonetheless an artist in his personal unusual method: his lisping, chirruping flip because the Hatter is a sometimes mannered passive-aggressive doodle, designed to disconcert quite than please.
His model of the character is principally a traumatised circus clown, not one million miles faraway from Batman‘s Joker: together with his inexperienced cat’s eyes ringed with mauve, orange curls sprouting from his eyebrows and a face like a squashed blancmange, how might he probably not scare youngsters? Within the midst of a lot conformity posing as creativeness, this refusal to be lovable provides By means of the Wanting Glass a tiny spark of life.