5/29/16 Alice Through The Looking Glass Was A Fun Ride?

    I thoroughly loved Through The Looking Glass, the colors and imagery lit up the screen beautifully.  The first scene puts us in a ship with Alice as captain.  She daringly commands the crew through a maneuver to avoid a battle with some pirates.  It is a little cheesy, but they escape to fight another day.  They then head back to England, where she has been gone over a year.  Things have changed, her previous suitor has chosen another bride and he has risen in rank and power.  He has forced Alice's mother to sign over their house title in exchange for the boat Alice commands. 
    While Alice goes to his house to convince him she must be sponsored to head out on another mission, she runs into a butterfly who is the caterpillar that was getting high in Alice In Wonderland.  She talks to him briefly and follows him towards a mirror and the butterfly goes through it thus the title.  She crosses over to discover the Hatter is in a depressed state which she must figure out how to save.  Remember that in this world nothing is impossible, only un-possible.
    She is directed to Time, played by Sacha Baron Cohen.  He is perfect in this role.  He dominates every scene he is in.  He warns Alice to forget about going into the past, "you can't change things, you can only learn from it."  Of course she doesn't listen, steals his "chronoscope" or something like that and uses it as a time machine to head back and fix where she thinks things went wrong.  She doesn't fix anything as she was told, but does learn that the Mad Hatter's family is alive and the Red Queen had something to do with their disappearance.
    Time starts chasing after Alice to get his device back as time itself starts unraveling without his device in it's place.  We go back with Alice to see the Mad Hatter as a kid and all his friends are there as young versions of themselves.  I thought the Cheshire cat was cute, he was a chubby kitty trying to figure out how to disappear and is clumsy about it.  At a certain point, Time meets up with the Mad Hatter and they have a pun filled great scene.  Time is not amused and punishes them by telling them they will always be 1 minute away from tea but never able to enjoy it.
    Alice eventually figures out the Red Queen has the Mad Hatter's family, and she goes and tells him.  He is depressed almost to dying, but word that his family is still alive brings him back to life.  There is a big battle scene where the Red Queen appears to get the upper hand.  She forces the White Queen to join her and they travel back in time to the point where the Red Queen had her accident that gave her the giant heart shaped head.
    Everything is almost ruined by the Red Queen, and for a second time is destroyed, but of course Alice manages to save the day.  Once Hatter is joined back with his family, her mission is complete and Alice can head back to the real world and deal with the problems facing her and her mother.