Helena Bonham Carter | The Media Tourist

Magic mirror returns plucky lass to Wonderland—or Underland

Alice Through the Looking Glass

Starring Mia Wasikowska, Sacha Baron Cohen & Johnny Depp

Directed by James Bobbin

British author Lewis Carroll’s tales of a Victorian lass and her escapades in an enchanted place of talking animals, odd humans and other curious creatures have been made into numerous movies, TV shows and stage adaptations—dozens since Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was originally published in 1865. In the early 1970s, the rock band Jefferson Starship made Alice the hook of its hippy-dippy song “White Rabbit,” which used her journey down a rabbit hole as a metaphor for another kind of “trip.” The ABC-TV modern-day fairytale anthology Once Upon a Time spun off a standalone series, Once Upon a Time in Wonderland, based on Carroll’s novels, in 2013.

Clearly, something about the plucky, curious young Alice never falls out of fashion.

“Go ask Alice,” sang Jefferson Starship’s Grace Slick.

Go ask Alice, indeed, for she is a most resourceful gal in this Disney follow-up to the House of Mouse’s Alice in Wonderland, which reunites most of the cast of the 2010 film. When we meet her in the opening scene, Alice Kingsleigh (Mia Wasikowska) is the cool-headed captain of her late father’s sailing ship, The Wonder, excitedly exploring the globe, narrowly escaping from pirates and clearly making her own way in a “man’s world” that wants to put her—and keep her—in her place.

Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter

When the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp) gets in a bit of a bind, his friends in Wonderland—now called “Underland”—know just what to do: Go ask Alice!

That sets the stage for Alice’s return—this time through a magic mirror—to the enchanted realm, where she again meets up with the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter), the White Queen (Anne Hathaway), Tweedles Dee and Dum (Matt Lucas), the Cheshire Cat, the March Hare, the Dormouse and the Bloodhound.

In order to help the Hatter, Alice must make a dangerous, daring trip back in time. That’s always tricky in any movie, and here it involves stealing a device called the Chronosphere from Time himself (Sacha Baron Cohen). The film’s weirdly wacky new character is a clockwork despot who speaks like German actor Christoph Waltz and is served by a staff of comical, robotic minions he refers to as his “seconds”—a time pun, get it?

Once again, Johnny Depp is all tics, weird hair and crazy quirks—three shades of eye shadow, eyebrows that look like florescent orange caterpillars attacking his forehead, ghoulish white makeup and yellow teeth. When the Hatter speaks, he sounds like he’s got marbles in his mouth and a lisp. It’s just too much.

Sacha Baron Cohen

So it’s practically an invitation for Sacha Baron Cohen to glide right in and steal the show with a perfectly calibrated performance of comedic timing, camp and cleverness, which he does.

British director James Bobbin (who also steered two Disney Muppets movies plus the brilliant Flight of the Conchords and Cohen’s satirical Da Ali G Show) replaces Tim Burton, who directed the 2010 Alice in Wonderland. Burton’s influence remains as one of the producers, however, and the whimsy and imagination of his original are still very much evident.

So: How long before we get our next trip to Wonderland/Underland? Go ask Alice!

—Neil Pond, Parade Magazine

Of Rags and Riches

New ‘Cinderella’ updates age-old fairytale with modern spectacle

Cinderella

Lily James, Cate Blanchett & Richard Madden

Directed by Kenneth Branagh

Downton Abbey launched the acting career of Lily James as the rebellious young Lady Rose, a character who joined the show’s sizeable ensemble in 2012. Now, in her first major movie role, the 25-year-old actress steps outside the Downton manor and into the iconic glass slippers of the most famous rags-to-riches fairy tale of all time.

Actor-turned-director Kenneth Branagh’s lavish, live-action production of Cinderella hews closely to the once-upon-a-time basics of the centuries-old European folk tale, especially the version with which most modern-day viewers are most familiar, Walt Disney’s iconic theatrical cartoon of 1950. But Branagh fills the outlines of Disney’s animated characters with pounding human heartbeats, encourages robust performances from his fine, mostly all-British cast, and wraps it all up in a sumptuous package of colorful, to-die-for costumes, spectacular settings and lush cinematography.

This Cinderella is also built on a deep foundation of tenderness and forgiveness, an antidote to all the cruelty and unfairness that our Cinderella will ultimately face, and overcome. “You have more kindness in your little finger than most people possess in their whole body,” says her dying mother (Hayley Atwell) to the little girl, “Ella” (Eloise Webb), who will grow up to become the “ragged servant girl” eventually transformed—for one literally magical night—into the princess of all princesses.

Cate Blanchett (center), Holliday Grainger and Sophie McShera

Lily James is as lovely as sunshine as the grown-up Cinderella, whose limitless optimism and kind-heartedness endures even after the arrival of her “evil” new stepmother (Kate Blanchett) and her two mean, dingbat daughters (Sophie McShera, also from Downton Abbey, and Holiday Granger).

You know the rest. But one of the coolest things about Branagh’s movie is how he makes this familiar tale feel so fresh, even though you know exactly where it’s going. He stages it like a full-scale period drama rather than a bedtime story, and there’s an epic splendor to everything—sweeping vistas of coastlines and oceans of the British Isles; vast, ornate castle interiors teeming with extras and activity; the lonely spaces of Cinderella’s attic quarters and kitchen.

Richard Madden

The ballroom sequence between Cinderella and the prince (Richard Madden from Game of Thrones) is magnificent; the transformation of the pumpkin into a glistening, golden carriage—courtesy of the fairy godmother (Helena Bonham Carter)—is a thing of whimsical wonder; the climactic, kingdom-wide search for the foot that perfectly fits the left-behind slipper has intrigue, humor, edge and suspense.

Both James and Madden find characters beyond—and beneath—their starry-eyed storybook romance, and Blanchett maintains a delicious, delicate balance of coldness and camp.

This grand new version of Cinderella may not make you believe in fairytales. But it might make you think, like Cinderella, that with enough “love, kindness and occasionally, a little bit of magic,” the world might, indeed, become a better place.

—Neil Pond, Parade Magazine

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Tag Archives: Helena Bonham Carter

Go Ask Alice

Magic mirror returns plucky lass to Wonderland—or Underland

Of Rags and Riches

New ‘Cinderella’ updates age-old fairytale with modern spectacle