Cast: Mia Wasikowska, Johnny Depp, Anne Hathaway, Sacha Baron Cohen, Helena Bonham Carter, Leo Bill, voices of Alan Wickman, Stephen Fry, Michael Sheen
Director: James Bobin
Genre: Adventure, fantasy
Duration: 113 minutes
Showing: Cinema Magic, Metroplex Mall Naalya, Century Cinemax Acacia Mall, Cineplex Cinema, Oasis Mall and Numax Cinema, Entebbe.
Following from the last time we saw Alice (Wasikowska), she now has control of her ship and has been sailing for three years. Looks like the independence and adventure she craved in the first movie, Alice in Wonderland, has come to fruition. That being said, it is not all calm waters and ideal wind strengths for Alice.
In Alice Through the Looking Glass, Alice returns to land in London and finds that some of her problems from the first movie still exist. For one, Hamish (Bill), that guy she refused to go steady with in the first movie is back. This time he is after Alice’s ship and is pulling a dirty card on her to get it. Alice is down in the dumps till a conversation with Absolem (Rickman) has her making a trip to Wonderland or Underland as it’s called in the movie, through a magical looking glass.
Once in Wonderland, Alice realises that her friend the Mad Hatter (Depp) is going through a spat of depression that is making him madder than usual. To help him, Alice goes to Time (Cohen) who advises her not to try to race against time. But because an adventure movie is never complete without someone refusing to take sound advice, Alice takes the risk and takes a trip through time. She accomplishes this using Time’s ticking chronosphere, a device the Red Queen (Carter) also wants her hands on. The movie is therefore Alice going back in time, taking a look at the lives of her friends and enemies alike, while racing against time.
I don’t know if it was the change of directors but this sequel is not as funny as the first one. This is a great disappointment given the cast of the movie. Sure, Cohen is hilarious as Time but there is a feeling that the rest of the cast was toned down a little bit.
The movie may not be as funny and whimsical as its predecessor but it is still a delight to watch, especially with the whole family. We get to see how all the characters came to be in bright, a little out-of-this-world costumes.