Alice through the Looking Glass, Review: It’s Hatter Time

When the Mad Hatter meets Alice in Lewis Carroll’s first book, he says, “I’ve been stuck at this tea party since last March, when Time and I quarrelled.” Now, bring in the fertile imagination of a writer and a director, and you have created a brand new character, Time himself, worked out in great detail, and playing a pivotal part. Alice, Hatter, Time, Iracebeth, Hamish...Alice through the Looking Glass is replete with characters and actors who conjure two separate worlds, and three distinct time spans, with élan.

It is the mid 1850s. Alice Kingsleigh (Ben spells it differentley) has spent the past three years following in her father's footsteps, and sailing the high seas. Her latest foray is a hazardous voyage to China, where she brilliantly outwits pirates in the Straits of Malacca, bringing her ship safely home. Upon her return to London, she finds out that her ex-fiancé, Hamish Ascot, has taken over his father's company, which runs the ships, and plans to have Alice sell him over her father's ship, in exchange for her family home. Her mother has already sold off their 10% stake in the company. Hamish derisively offers her a job as a clerk in the company, which the brave ship-captain finds humiliating. After a fight with her mother on the matter, Alice follows a butterfly she recognises as Absolem, and returns through a mirror to Underland.

Alice is greeted by the White Queen (Mirana), the White Rabbit, the twin Tweedles, the Dormouse, Bayard and the now-you-see-me-now-you-don’t Cheshire Cat. They inform her that Tarrant Hightopp (Mad Hatter) is acting madder than usual, after he has stumbled on to something that suggests that his family, believed long dead, is still alive. He has not been opening his door to anyone, but Alice is special.  She finds that he is in a bad physical shape, and tries to console him, but he remains sure of his families’ survival of the Attack of the Jabberwocky. Convinced that finding the Hatter's family is the only way to stop his deteriorating health, the White Queen comes up with a plan that calls for Alice to consult Time himself, and convince him to save the Hatter's family, in the past. Upon visiting Time's palace, Alice finds the Chronosphere, an object that powers all time in Underland, and can travel through Time itself.

A genre specialist, Linda Woolverton (The Lion King, Alice in Wonderland, Maleficent) has written the screenplay, based on Lewis Carroll books, published in 1871, and set 20-30 years earlier. Woolverton juggles competently with science fiction (the whole Time track), fairy-tale (Wonderland, Underland, Mirrorland) and present-day adventures and class conflicts (the relevant real-time being the mid 1850s). There is a lot of humour too, sadly much of it lost in diction. In working out a script with the above elements, Woolverton has broadened the audience base, to include persons above 18, not the primary viewership of Alice stories. It does seem stretching things too far when you find that Iracebeth is Time’s mistress. And really, the whole Hatter matter is overdone.

Director James Bobin (The Muppets, Muppets Most Wanted) gives you a feast of colours and a festival of stunning CGI, in extreme close-ups, co-produced by Tim Burton. Alice through the Looking Glass takes off in a stunning sea-piracy sequence, much in the mould of the Pirates of the Caribbean. You do not see a single pirate, and yet, you are on the edge of your seat, as Alice’s ship almost keels over. Shot at Longcross, in Hampshire, on specially built, 200-foot gimbals, which could rock to one side by 90 degrees, eight, two-ton water dumps, and, huge fans (blowers). Bobin goes over-indulgent with Hatter, and the track lasts a little longer than what was good for it. Time is ingeniously captured. And Bobin succeeds in demarcating distinct realms, as the story demands, with great detail.

Mia Wasikowska (Alice in Wonderland, Madame Bovary, Crimson Peak) has unique features that lend themselves to any physical age and era in history. Moreover, she shows a lot of gusto and deep sentimentality, wherever required. Johnny Depp as the Hatter gets the footage he deserves, and is as stylised as ever, with his face and skin being used as a colour palette.  Imagine a dwarf, with triangular, red, fluffy hair behind a bald forehead, and carrying it off! That’s Helen Bonham-Carter (Iracebeth) for you. Permanently pained, with only occasional moments of normalcy, Anne Hathaway fits the bill. Matt Lucas plays the rotund twins, present mainly to impart humour. Sacha Noam Baron Cohen (Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, The Dictator, Les Misérables) may as well be 2016’s Peter Sellers, and has a ball, prancing around in a clockwork range.

Rhys Ifans joins the party as Zanik Hightopp, the Mad Hatter’s father. Stephen Fry, Michael Sheen, Timothy Spall, Lindsay Duncan, Leo Bill and Geraldine James render good support. Alan Rickman is the voice of Absolem, the Butterfly, and you will hear him mouth very few lines. Rickman died in January this year.

Alive through the Looking Glass is about Time, and the duration is 1 hour 53 minutes. When you go to watch the film, don’t forget to carry your Chronosphere.

Rating: ***

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3IWwnNe5mc