Alice Through the Looking Glass

I did actually want to like Through the Looking Glass. I love animation and I wasn't looking for a faithful adaptation of a timeless if perhaps difficult to adapt story. And Burbank Films Australia have shown that they are capable of making good animations, I loved their versions of Wind in the Willows and Peter and also thought their Treasure Island was good. But The Three Musketeers, Old Curiosity Shop and Prisoner of Zenda show that their output can also be disappointing. Sadly Through the Looking Glass was one of the disappointing ones. I did like the voice acting, with the standout being Phyllis Diller and also the surreal touches like Alice in the carriage with a character made of newspaper, the train that takes to the air and the journey via a paddle boat. However, the animation is sub-par with some of the characters looking stiff and flat colouring. The music also manages to be insipid, I do remember hating the Jabberwocky song when I was little and my perception hasn't changed. The script is often too modernised and americanised especially Alice's Kleenex line when she meets the White Knight, the story has some details from the book like the train ride, White Knight and TweedleDum/Tweedledum but a lot of it feels improvised with little of the oddball nature of the story and no sense of threat, the centaurs and unicorn characters are little more than fantasy standard clichés and the Lewis Carroll creations lack colour and absurdity with Alice bland and Jabberwocky made up to be more like cuddly children's' movie monsters, a complete anti-thesis to the famous poem about him. So overall, other than some of the surreal touches and the voice work, Through the Looking Glass was a disappointment. 3/10 Bethany Cox