Butler's Cinema Scene

Mia Wasikowska, Johnny Depps.

“ALICE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS”   My rating: C 

113 minutes  | MPAA rating: PG

Perhaps to truly enjoy Disney’s “Alice Through the Looking Glass,” just forget there was ever a Rev. Charles Dodgson, a socially awkward mathematician who under the nom de plume Lewis Carroll wrote children’s fantasies bursting with sly satire and fabulous wordplay.

Sly satire and fabulous wordplay are in short supply in this overproduced yet perfunctory sequel to 2010’s “Alice in Wonderland.” They’ve been replaced by unfocused, unmanaged movement. This is a very busy film.

The best way to approach “Looking Glass” is as a two-hour 3-D special effects demonstration reel. With lowered expectations it might not be so bad.

Fans of the Carroll novels will be utterly at sea. Familiar characters drift in and out, but the story cooked up by screenwriter Linda Woolverton is cut from whole cloth and hits hard on issues of female empowerment — a worthy topic, perhaps, but not something on the Rev. Dodgson’s radar.

In the first scene Alice (Mia Wasikowska reprising her role), now a young woman, is the captain of a sailing ship braving a fierce storm and Malay pirates.

Bring on the F/X!

She returns to 1870s England only to discover that her beloved father has died and her impoverished mother (Lindsay Duncan) has agreed to sell the ship to the pea-brained, chauvinistic ex-fiance she spurned in the first movie.

Guided by a butterfly (voiced by the late Alan Rickman in his final role) Alice passes through a mirror into “Underland,”  where a new quest awaits her.

She learns that the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp) is ailing — at death’s door, in fact, mourning the demise of his family years before.

Alice resolves to travel back in time to rewrite history and save her suffering friend. This entails a visit to the citadel occupied by Time personified (Sacha Baron Cohen), where she pilfers a time machine.

Once in the past she not only tries to rectify the Hatter’s domestic situation but discovers the origin of the enmity between the White Queen (Anne Hathaway) and her sister, the foul-tempered Queen of Hearts (Helena Bonham Carter).

At one point the story zaps back to the real world, where Alice has been institutionalized with what her barbaric male doctor calls “a textbook case of female hysteria.”

Sacha Baron Cohen as Time

But mostly, “Alice Through the Looking Glass” involves much running about through computer-generated environments populated with bizarre and fantastic creatures, most of whom make only cameo appearances.

Narratively and emotionally the film is D.O.A.

There are a few bright spots. Wasikowska, one of our finest young actresses, is always a pleasure to watch, and she exhibits such dedication to this hare-brained yarn that she almost succeeds in selling it.

Baron Cohen wears out his welcome — he always does —but you’ve got to give him credit for doing a spot-on imitation of German director Werner Herzog. (Herzog as Father Time … not a bad joke, actually.)

Depp, who had a couple of genuinely powerful moments in the first “Alice,” here lets his makeup do much of the acting. Mostly he mopes.

For this sequel, Tim Burton is now a producer, handing off directing duties to James Bobin, a veteran of the recent “Muppet” movies, the bizarrely eccentric “Flight of the Conchords” and Baron Cohen’s “Da Ali G Show.”

Burton’s ability to control and synthesize all sorts of roiling madness is sorely missed. Bobin is more traffic cop than director. The results are exhausting.

“Alice Through the Looking Glass” is crammed with eye candy. Girls (or their parents) may appreciate the movie’s embrace of opportunities for women.

Other than that it’s mostly empty calories

| Robert W. Butler