Alice Through a Looking Glass: A Quirky Trip Down Memory Lane

Alright, so if you're coming to Alice Through a Looking Glass hoping for some slick, modern spectacle, you're gonna be in for a bit of a shock. This isn't that. But if you’re a total bookworm for Lewis Carroll, or just someone who appreciates seeing how filmmakers tackled these wild stories back in the day, then yeah, there's definitely something here for you. It's a bit *wonky*, a bit *quaint*, and sometimes you just gotta lean into that. For everyone else? Probably a pass. 🙅‍♀️

The whole premise, Alice stepping through a mirror, is still as brilliant as ever. And the movie does a decent job of setting up that immediate sense of *wrongness*. The furniture coming to life, the talking flowers – it all feels just a touch off-kilter, which is exactly what you want.

Walter Lang, who I guess was involved quite a bit in the cast here, really tries to make his presence felt. You can almost see him trying to inject that Carrollian madness into every scene. Some of the expressions from the characters are pretty broad, mind you. It's like they're trying to make sure you *really* get what they're feeling, even when the scene itself is a bit subdued.

The chess board world, that's the main stage, right? Visually, it's… okay. You get the idea. The pieces are there, but the scale doesn't always feel as grand as it should. Sometimes it just looks like a slightly oversized room with big chess pieces plopped in. The Red Queen, though, she manages to look pretty imposing. 👑

One thing that always gets me with these adaptations is the poetry. The famous Jabberwocky poem, it's just *there*. You hear it, sure, but it's hard to capture that internal, nonsensical rhythm that makes it so unforgettable in the book. It just kinda floats by. Its easy to forget how much of Carroll's genius is in the words, not just the visuals.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of Alice Through a Looking Glass (1928) through its definitive frames.

And the whole backward thing, where time and logic keep reversing? They do some neat tricks for its era, no doubt. But it doesn't quite give you that dizzying, mind-bending feeling the book conjures. It's more like a visual gag than a fundamental shift in reality. You know, like when a film tries too hard to be clever and it just ends up being a little… *telegraphic*.

The pacing is a mixed bag. There are moments where Alice just seems to be meandering, and you kinda zone out a bit. And then suddenly, boom, she's meeting Tweedledee and Tweedledum, and things pick up. The Tweedledee and Tweedledum fight, it's fun, very slapstick. But the philosophical undercurrent, that deep dive into identity and logic? That gets a bit lost in the shuffle.

The White Knight's scene, that's one of my favorites in the book. Here, it has that *melancholy* air, which they got right. His inventions are silly, just as they should be. But again, the real humor, the verbal wit, is kinda hard to translate to the screen without dialogue doing the heavy lifting.

The Walrus and the Carpenter bit feels a little rushed. Like they knew they had to cram it in, but didn't quite know how to give it the weight it deserves. It passes by quickly, and you almost forget it happened. Such a great, tragic little story, too.

This film is ultimately a curiosity. It's a snapshot of a different time, when filmmakers were still figuring out how to tell these kinds of fantastical stories. It’s got a certain charm, especially if you can forgive some of its clunkier moments. It doesn't quite capture the full *wonder* or *terror* of Carroll's world, but it definitely tries. And sometimes, trying hard is enough to make it worth a look. ✨