Alice Through the Looking Glass

This is the best film version of the Lewis Carroll story that I've seen. Other versions usually employ comedians as actors and their performances are always way over-the-top. This version is really amusing because the dialogs are so deadpan serious. Sort of Pythonesque. I think that is how Lewis Carroll intended it to be done; that is how I read the books. I love the dialog between Alice (Kate Beckinsale) and the White Knight (Ian Holm). They are both so intense and sincere about discussing such very silly topics and that is what makes it so amusing. Kate's reactions to many of the inane things that happen is so subdued. It's perfect.

As someone who has read the Alice book's over and over again (mainly as an adult) I have been consistently disappointed with adaptations, which always focus on the surreal story while ignoring most of Lewis Carroll's brilliant, hilarious jokes. But this version of Through the Looking Glass doesn't give us musical numbers or turn it into a simple children's tale (or, alternately, create a dark, satirical adult version) but instead gives us Lewis Carroll, faithfully. The logic-based jokes, the curious puns, the abrupt insults, are all intact and glorious.

The movie begins as Kate Beckinsale falls asleep while reading Looking Glass to her child and dreams of herself as Alice. To be clear, because this point seems to elude a lot of IMDB reviewers, Beckinsale is playing the 7 year old Alice of the book, not an adult version, and not a pretend-child version. Just an adult dreaming she's a child. While I was skeptical ahead of time, Beckinsale perfectly captures Alice's mix of wonder and bemusement.

The rest cast is consistently amazing and hilarious, particularly the two queens and the two Tweedles, who are hilarious as young toughs even if they do race through The Walrus and the Carpenter so quickly that they ruin most of its jokes.

The story has the dream structure of the book, and if you're looking for a sensibly plotted story that is not something you should expect from the Alice books. It's a dream, and if you're own dreams are less confusing than this one then you have a very ordered mind. Alice jumps from one episode to the next with little reason, and poems fly thick and fast, illustrated in a variety of imaginative ways.

While most of the significant parts of the book are there, there are some cuts and a surprising addition. The Red Queen's classic run through the garden with Alice is gone, as is the entire Lion/Unicorn section (which I'm surprised to see some people inexplicably consider the best part of the book), and some scenes are truncated. Which would be understandable as a time constraint if the movie hadn't added the bit with the wig, which was deservedly cut from the original book and adds nothing. This is the one serious mistake of the movie.

It's true, as some have pointed out, that the special effects are low budget, and if you prefer a visually striking adaptation that cuts out most of Carroll's wit there are many options. But if you want to see a true adaptation of one of the funniest and most imaginative books in all of literature, this is easily your best choice.

Highly recommended.

Without infringing on the IMDb guidelines, can I just suggest that this film is a disappointing visualisation of the greatest book ever written? Lewis Carroll's masterpiece is too mercurial to depict - taken out of its literary context, its ideas, incidents and characters simply don't make sense. Its humour and traumas are literary and philosophical. The filmmakers fail to adapt forms, instead relying on swathes of dialogue.

Different film styles are used to try and disrupt normality, a la Carroll, but the incoherent script, uncertain acting and muffled diction only grate. There is no sense of narrative momentum (even if only to be subverted), and targets are missed because it is unclear what they are. Changing the book's view from that of a child to a woman renders the whole exercise redundant. Graver still is the unwillingness to trust the audience - the dream/reality ambiguity, crucial to the book's meaning, is too clearcut. The colours and set design can be extremely beautiful though.

Both Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass are classics, rich in atmosphere and with colourful characters. Admittedly they are episodic but in a way that is part of the books' charm. Both are also difficult to adapt because of the structure, the atmosphere and Carroll's way of words, especially Through the Looking Glass where the structure is even more nonsensical and the characters even kookier. This adaptation is a valiant effort and it is on the most part the most faithful adaptation of Through the Looking Glass, whether it is the best is up for debate, I remember liking the 1973 BBC adaptation more but that may change on re-watch.

This version is far from perfect, the ending is abrupt, Kate Beckinsale's hair did look too modern and the Walrus and the Carpenter scene felt very badly rushed through, the production values in this scene did look on the amateurish side. While the Wasp with the Wig segment was interesting and well done the adaptation may have made more sense with the Lion and the Unicorn scene intact- it felt like it was meant to be there in the first place but edited out- and the White Knight scene really could have done without the black and white footage which added nothing to the scene. Some of the adaptation especially at the end felt rushed, if they had slowed things down those who had trouble following the story may have understood it a little more. The adaptation does look decent though, very TV-movie-bound, but it is colourful and attractive enough once you get used to Alice's constant clothes changes and Tweedledum and Tweedledee made up to look like characters from A Clockwork Orange.

The photography is nicely done and flows decently into each frame and scene. The music is laden with whimsy, a sense of wonder and subtle edge, very like a fantasy adventure score should sound. The script is very true to Carroll's humour and how he wrote, the sing-song-like poetry and oddball nature are most endearing too. A-Sitting on the Gate stood out in this respect. The story maintains the episodic feel that the book has and also the wonderful weirdness(in a couple of scenes a little too weird admittedly) and whimsical charm. In terms of individual scenes, the melancholic White Knight scene and the really genuinely spooky train sequence stood out. The flower garden scene was colourful also, and the White Queen and Red Queen encounters are nicely done. The jabberwocky is much scarier in the Natalie Gregory adaptation(which I also preferred over this despite some of the songs and casting not quite being there), but it still makes the same impact here. The cast are fine.

Kate Beckinsale is too old- Kate Burton was also too old, around the same age, in the excellent theatre production from 1983 and she actually still worked- but there is still the winsomeness, assertiveness, sense of confusion and simple charm that you'd expect Alice to have. Ian Richardson, Marc Warren and Steve Coogan also give nice contributions, but the standouts were Sian Phillips' menacingly imposing Red Queen, Penelope Wilton as a riotuous White Queen(though much more subtle than the hilariously batty Carol Channing in the Natalie Gregory adaptation) and especially the touching White Knight- the only sympathetic character on Alice's adventures- of Ian Holm. In conclusion, a good if flawed version(though if people dislike it it is easy to see why), Through the Looking Glass is a very difficult book to adapt and this does valiantly with it. 7/10 Bethany Cox

I only had a passing familiarity with the works of Lewis Carroll, (I had a children's book of Alice in Wonderland and gave a reading of Jabberwocky for my tenth grade English class) so I couldn't comment very authoritatively on the literary significance of this movie. I can say I thought some of the readings were very good...Humpty-Dumpty and the White Knight for instance. But I especially liked Kate Beckinsale's performance. She is very beautiful and talented, and by herself would make the picture worth watching.