A sequel to the 2010, hugely successful, Alice in Wonderland movie which somehow managed to bring in over $1 billion worldwide at the box office. This time we find Alice (Mia Wasikowska) on the high seas as captain of her own ship, taking on the elements and pirates just to show that she is no ordinary girl (or woman as she must be now) however when she returns home she finds that, her former beau Hamish Ascot (Leo Bill), has taken over his father’s company and plans to have Alice sell him her father’s ship in exchange for the return of the deeds to her family home. After an argument with her mother over this situation she runs off (again) and follows a butterfly, who she believes to be Absolem from her first adventure, through a magical mirror which brings her back to Wonderland although this time the plot of the book is discarded for a different theme.

All the characters are back again however this time she finds that The Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp) is acting very unusual and his failing health is based on the fact that he now believes that his family, that he initially believed were dead, are still alive so the White Queen (Anne Hathaway) suggests that Alice speaks with Time (Sacha Baron Cohen) to see if he can help in finding out how this occurred but Time is unwilling to assist and advises her that you cannot change the past however Alice steals an instrument called the Chronosphere which allows her to travel back in time to find out what happened to the Hatters family. From that point it becomes a chase across tihe ages as Alice travels back and forward between the real world and Wonderland trying to change the past but inevitably only changing things for the worse which culminates in the Chronosphere falling into the hands of the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter) who decides to use the instrument to rule all of time.

While Tim Burton managed to create a sense of fantasy around the characters in the first movie this time the characters suffer from a lack of use. It’s all about Alice and unfortunately Wasikowska just doesn’t feel like she is the center point of the movie and is often overshadowed by other characters. Also her portrayal of the grown up Alice still feels childlike. Depp has very litter to do, Bonham Carter is good when on screen but the time is limited and ditto for Hathaway. The rest of the cast are only background noise and the one person who is given any type of center stage is Cohen’s Time character who does a good job as the master of the clock but overall they are battling against a poor script and a seeming lack of vision to bring the same magic to the screen that the first movie had. While not a bad movie it’s not a particular good movie either although I’m sure it will still make a fortune at the box office.

DJ Speaks Rating: 4.5 Out Of 10