Alice Through The Looking Glass ** ½

Dir:  James Bobin

Starring: Mia Wasikowska, Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham-Carter, Sacha Baron Cohen, Anne Hathaway, Alan Rickman (voice), Stephen Fry (voice), Timothy Spall (voice)

2010’s Alice In Wonderland, directed by Tim Burton, was a boring, confused mess which basically sucked all the fun out of Lewis Carroll’s classic tale. A Burton-Carroll confection - two wild imaginations coming together -seemed, on paper at least, an ideal match. The actual movie proved to be the exact opposite. Burton tried to make sense out of Carroll’s wonderful nonsense thereby missing the whole point of the author’s frabjous illogic. All the director ended up doing was to create yet another big budget fantasy epic in 3-D which borrowed some familiar characters from Carroll and various elements from films like The Lord Of The Rings, The Chronicles Of Narnia and Shrek. Worse was the decision to make Johnny Depp’s Mad Hatter a much bigger player in the proceedings than Carroll ever intended and he turned out to be more of an irritating presence than an entertaining one. Yet, the movie made more than a billion dollars so, inevitably, we get the sequel. The only surprise is that it took six years to get made.

This time around the director is James Bobin with Burton still hanging around as producer. Most of the original cast is back (with the only major addition being Sacha Baron Cohen as Time) and the look and feel of the first movie is carried over into the sequel as well. What’s different this time around is that the plot - Alice has to fix the past to help her friend the Hatter – has more coherence (though not resembling the original novel much at all) while borrowing certain elements from Frozen. The movie also benefits from having the Hatter participating less directly in the proceeding and Depp’s performance is more effective for it. Helena Bonham-Carter (as the Red Queen) and Cohen are also very good and it is moving to hear the recently deceased Alan Rickman’s voice (perhaps for the last time) as the blue butterfly Absolem. On the flip side, Wasikowska merely serves the purpose in the titular role while Anne Hathaway is a bit of a washout as the White Queen.

I may be looking at Through The Looking Glass slightly more favourably than I should merely because it improves upon the first entry in the series. Otherwise there’s no particularly good reason to go out of your way to see this movie.

Cut to chase: A slight improvement over the first Depp/Wasikowska Alice movie.

 

Mother’s Day **

Dir:  Garry Marshall

Starring: Jennifer Aniston, Kate Hudson, Julia Roberts, Jason Sudeikis, Sarah Chalke, Aasif Mandvi, Timothy Olyphant, Shay Mitchell, Hector Elizondo, Britt Robertson, Jack Whitehall

Garry Marshall takes the same formula that he used in the utterly predictable Valentine’s Day and New Year’s Day to even less good effect in Mother’s Day. Nice looking people playing generally nice people with interconnected lives (even if tangentially so) whose romantic and other personal problems and entanglements get resolved with nary a consequence and mostly everybody walking away smiling and happy. It’s comfort food but comfort food isn’t necessarily good for you and after a while it doesn’t even taste very good.

Sandy (Jennifer Aniston) is a divorced mum of two with a vague idea of getting back with her ex (Timothy Olyphant). Sandy is friends with Jesse (Kate Hudson), married and a mother of one. Jesse’s "problem" is that her husband is an Indian-American (Aasif Mandvi) and she has to hide that fact from her racist parents. Jesse’ sister, Gabi (Sarah Chalke) has her own secret: she’s gay and is co-parenting her adoptive son with her wife. As you can imagine the racist parents are kind of homophobic too. Also on hand is a widower (Jason Sudeikis) struggling to raise his two daughters after the death of his wife (Jennifer Garner in a cameo that is rather hackneyed in its use of a recorded video message meant to supposedly jerk some tears). Britt Robertson is a young mother of a daughter who just won’t commit to her aspiring stand-up comic boyfriend (Jack Whiteall) who is also the father of her child while Julia Roberts is a super-successful businesswoman who happens to be visiting Atlanta, the city where all these characters reside. How she’s connected to them will become clear in good time.

Of course, everything that happens is fairly trite and obvious. The humour too is rather banal and sometimes borders on being racist. Everything pretty much gets tied up in a rather neat little bow and even Sandy and Gabi’s bigoted parents get redeemed. We know Garry Marshall likes fairy-tales (after all this is the man who made Pretty Woman and The Princess Diaries) but even fairy-tales have their dark sides and they often bite. Marshall desperately needs to break out of his rut.

Cut to chase: Will make nobody’s day.

Kmumtaz1@hotmail.com; Twitter: @KhusroMumtaz

 

* Not on your life ** Hardly worth the bother **  ½ Okay for a slow afternoon only *** Good enough for a look see ***½ Recommended viewing **** Don’t miss it **** ½ Almost perfect ***** Perfection