Alice through the looking glass review ign
As he did with his Batman films, Burton lets the supporting cast and villains overshadow the protagonist. Crispin Glover is fine as the Knave of Hearts, essentially playing his henchman role from Charlie's Angels but with a look that's a cross between Edward Scissorhands and Sir Guy of Gisbourne in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Even at his worst here, though, Depp's still Depp and he manages to keep you interested in what he might do next. His accent wavers between lispy English and the angry Scottish burr of William Wallace maybe that can be chalked up to the Mad Hatter likely having multiple personalities, but it's noticeably inconsistent. Depp starts off OK, but quickly loses the thread of what he was going for and falls back on a bag of tricks he's used in past Burton films and in the Pirates series. Burton often defended his casting of Michael Keaton in Batman by saying he could envision reviews of the film where critics hailed the supporting cast but slammed the wooden unknown playing the title role if only he'd thought of the same thing here, too.īonham Carter steals the show, upstaging even Depp and getting the film's biggest laughs. She's bland, bored and has a flat delivery casting a quirkier actress, someone who could suggest an inner life for the character or who had a spark in their eyes, could have made Alice more interesting and dynamic, even if the script's interpretation of Alice is far removed from Lewis Carroll's conception of her.
Mia Wasikowska is simply miscast in the title role.
#ALICE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS REVIEW IGN MOVIE#
You only ever connect with the movie when the human characters are on-screen – actually, let me be more specific: when Depp or Bonham Carter are on-screen, because their arrival brings a much needed injection of energy into what had been a long, plodding affair. (Note to consumers: there's no reason why you can't see Alice in 2D to get the same experience at less cost.) Alice might have worked better had it been either entirely CG-animated, or if more of the characters had been, like the Mad Hatter or the Red Queen, real actors augmented by makeup and some digital manipulation. The CG animation here just isn't all that impressive, and neither is the film's much hyped but ineffective use of 3D Avatar this is not. It's like a trip to Toon Town, but without any of the charm or fun the interactions between the cartoon characters and the real people in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? felt more tactile than anything in Alice. You seldom believe that Alice or the other "human" characters (the Hatter, Red Queen, White Queen, the Knave of Hearts) are truly interacting with the fully CG-animated inhabitants of Wonderland. But Alice feels exactly like what its production was: a green screen exercise with actors hamming it up for nonexistent cartoon characters who will be added later. Even in fantasy films there needs to be a sense of reality, even if that reality is of the trippy, mind-bending kind. Nothing in this movie feels real, either physically or emotionally. Sadly, the disappointing and uninspired Alice is no exception. The Hatter and friends believe that only Alice - if she is "the" Alice - can save Underland by putting the despot's kindly younger sister, the White Queen ( Anne Hathaway), in power.Īs a director, Tim Burton has often favored production design and embraced his inner illustrator over the necessities of story and character.
But this Underland is no longer so wonderful it's now a desolate realm lorded over by the Red Queen (a composite of the Red Queen and the Queen of Hearts, and played by Helena Bonham Carter). Alice soon falls down the rabbit hole and arrives in Underland (whose inhabitants admonish her for calling it Wonderland when she was there as a child, an experience she now only recalls as a distant dream).Īlice is soon reunited with such old acquaintances as the Mad Hatter ( Johnny Depp), the March Hare, Tweedledee & Tweedledum ( Matt Lucas), the Cheshire Cat (voiced by Stephen Fry), and the hookah-smoking Caterpillar (voiced by Alan Rickman). Spotting the White Rabbit (voiced by Michael Sheen) in the bushes, she gives chase, running away from her suitor before she can accept his marriage proposal. The film picks up 13 years after the events depicted in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, with a now 20 year-old Alice ( Mia Wasikowska) being pressured into a loveless, arranged marriage to a nitwitted aristocrat by her widowed mother and older sister.
Director Tim Burton's motion-capture 3D Alice in Wonderland is a pseudo-sequel to Lewis Carroll's classic tales.