Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10

Cast: Mia Wasikowska, Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Anne Hathway, Sacha Baron Cohen, Rhys Ifans, Matt Lucas, Lindsay Duncan, Leo Bill, Geraldine James, Andrew Scott, Richard Armitage, Ed Speleers, Timothy Spall, Alan Rickman, Stephen Fry, Barbara Windsor, Michael Sheen, Paul Hunter, Siobhan Redmond, Paul Whitehouse.

Logic is all well and good but it doesn’t give the eye pleasure and certainly never teaches a valuable lesson to those who pay no heed to Time. Whether you believe Time is the enemy, out to make rust and corrode, eventually taking all you had and were and turning it into dust to be blown and scattered to the four winds, or if you believe that Time is a friend, a guide to make you realise your full potential, an entity that must be heeded wisely; you can be sure that Alice will do her best to keep time at close hand.

Alice Through The Looking Glass may not hold fast and dear to the original text laid down by the great Lewis Carroll but it does give a splendid full sense of scope to the mind of Tim Burton and his ever increasing cast of players to whom are wonderfully indebted to him for having the peculiar and creative imagination to run with a huge and a colourful abundant story.

It is the scope of imagination that runs through the film that makes it feel cosy, warm and mysterious and whilst the script at times leads itself down a path to which makes the cinema goer nervous, that the snatch of time is heavy and makes you wonder if the scope was too big, it still retains more than enough whimsy, enough character to see it through to its inevitable and heart warming conclusion.

Central to this is the relationship between Johnny Depp, the ever astonishing Mia Wasikowska and Sacha Baron Cohen, each one of these actors stands out in there appointed part and Mia Wasikowska, although being at least a decade older than the original inspiration behind Lewis Carroll’s heroine, captures the heart, gentleness and truth behind such Victorian steadfastness. Mr. Depp, no stranger to the mind of Tim Burton, plays to his best and gives whimsy a new description, a new face as he returns to the part of the Hatter.

A decent film which children and those with imagination will love, not one at all for the purists but who needs purity when insanity, illogical thought and Alice are at hand to keep Time at bay.

Ian D. Hall