+ Most Expensive Flop of the Year + Worst Sequel of the Year
 |
| Johnny Deep as the Mad Hatter is most prominent on this packed, dizzying, highly detailed poster for James Bobin's Alice Through the Looking Glass |
Alice returns home from the seven seas - and faces intransigent challenges. She walks through a mirror to Wonderland, in which the Mad Hatter has grown increasingly mad, apparently because his family's death many years ago haunts him. - Alice must travel back in time to change this!
Alice Through the Looking Glass is the sequel to Tim Burton's good big hit 3D spectacle Alice in Wonderland (2010). It is written by Linda Woolverton (Maleficent (2014)), based on Lewis Carroll's (A Tangled Tale (1885)) characters, and directed by James Bobin (The Muppets (2011)).
The film begins well with the self-assured Alice's return to patriarchal ridicule, but somewhere along the way after this, the illusion that the film tries to build falls apart, despite its radiant colors and exuberant effects.
Sacha Baron Cohen (The Brothers Grimsby (2016)) entertains a Werner Herzog-inspired accent here as the villain Time and possesses some strange, Transformers-like creatures. Johnny Depp (The Libertine (2004)) looks stranger than in the first film as the Mad Hatter and now has frog-like eyes. He does well for the most part, but there are shots in which he visibly struggles to find the right face, and this is understandable: The sappy story about Alice's having to save the Hatter's family, - of whom we only really get to know his unlovable father, - so that that same father can finally accept the Hatter wholeheartedly - is muck.
The story is the main issue here, wobbling and just plain bad. SPOILER As the past sees the future towards the end, everything turns rusty in excremental browns, but why this happens - don't ask, for the film has no answer. Mia Wasikowska (Jane Eyre (2011)), who was a major part of why the first film was quite a thrill, is an adult woman now and much less compelling as Alice.
Alice Through the Looking Glass is a major flop for all involved. Ouch.
Related posts:
Alice in Wonderland (2010) - Wasikowska is the perfect lead for Burton's visual wonderland
James Bobin: 2016 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2016 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
The Muppets (2011) or, Man or Muppet?
Watch a trailer for the film here
Cost: 170 mil. $
Box office: 299.4 mil. $
= Big flop
[Alice Through the Looking Glass premiered 10 May (London) and runs 113 minutes. Shooting took place in England from August - October 2014. The film opened #2, behind fellow new release X-Men: Apocalypse, to a 26.8 mil. $ first weekend, down 70 % from the first film's 116 mil. $, in North America, where it spent another week in the top 5 (#4) and grossed an abysmally low 77 mil. $ (25.7 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were China with 58.7 mil. $ (19.6 %) and Japan with 26.7 mil. $ (8.9 %). The film was one of the year's costliest flops, resulting in a loss of around 125 mil. $. It was nominated for a Grammy and 3 Razzie awards. Bobin has not been hired for another project since. Alice Through the Looking Glass is rotten at 30 % with a 4.6/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of Alice Through the Looking Glass?
No comments:
Post a Comment