Alice Through the Looking Glass (1998)

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Once I started to watch this movie, it immediately became apparent that the director assumed the audience read the book first. I would think any one who never read the lesser known classic, would be totally lost.The film, for the most part, did good job sticking to the books story line, though they dropped some stuff, and added others.The weirdest part was casting an adult actor to play the role of a child ... "I am 7 and 6 months old", said the 20+ year old .The interactions never seem right with a "childish" adult.For the most part, the looking glass world looks about what I imagined it to be from the book, though things were changed around a bit.The oddest part was, one of the Tweedles looking like the guy from A Clockwork Orange. Over all, it's an all right movie ( if the watcher first read the book ), geared more for younger folks.Definitely worth a watch.

One might think that with a stellar cast (Sian Phillips, Ian Richardson, et al) and such rich source material, "Alice Through the Looking Glass" would do justice to the beloved book. Alas, it is far from the case here.Kate Beckinsale is one of the films biggest liabilities. News to any producer or director of any future version of either of Carroll's two "Alice" books: the "Alice" in the stories is between 7-1/2 and 9 years of age; NOT in her 20s! The story is absolutely absurd with an "Alice" that old. The internal logic of both stories depend entirely upon Alice being mystified by the world of adults. How can this work when SHE HERSELF is an adult?! It just makes her look like an adult with the mind of a child.Problem #2: the production values are laughably amateurish, and not in a charming, inventive "Doctor Who" way. The "special effects", such as they are, are the sort that come as handy plug-ins in Adobe Premiere; "liquid mirror", "tunnel vision", and the like. Also, green-screening abounds, in its crudest form. Editing is likewise god-awful, with harsh cuts, bad segues, lost continuity, etc.Problem #3: the music. It really does sound as if the director got his hands on a CD of "Generic Library Music for Fairy Tales", and simply plugged the background music in, and as often as possible. There is none of the creative scoring of great earlier versions of "Alice..." Problem #4: the pacing is glacial. Carroll's wordplay should delight the ears and enliven the plot. Nothing could be further from the truth here. It is a stultifyingly boring production, with long passages of nothing worth paying attention to. There are, thankfully, two recitations that are *almost* magical (by the "Wasp" and the "White Knight"), but those rely more upon those actors' verbal skills than on the images they accompany, which are a potpourri of low-tech gimmicks (stop-motion animation, grain effects, etc.)Surely, someone out there could make a worthwhile version of "Alice Through the Looking Glass". Great cast (well, most of them) notwithstanding, his one is about as far from it as could be imagined. Carroll fans should give it a wide berth.

This is the best film version of the Lewis Carroll story that I've seen. Other versions usually employ comedians as actors and their performances are always way over-the-top. This version is really amusing because the dialogs are so deadpan serious. Sort of Pythonesque. I think that is how Lewis Carroll intended it to be done; that is how I read the books. I love the dialog between Alice (Kate Beckinsale) and the White Knight (Ian Holm). They are both so intense and sincere about discussing such very silly topics and that is what makes it so amusing. Kate's reactions to many of the inane things that happen is so subdued. It's perfect.

Gorgeous little film. I'm not sure how accurate to the book it was, but I've never believed that to be too important, two different mediums.Beautiful scenery plus the added benefits of the not-unattractive Kate Beckinsale and the impressive acting of Sir Ian Holm.9/10