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Alice Through the Looking Glass | 2016 | PG | - 1.4.1
Escaping her sexist would-be fiancé through a magic mirror portal, Alice (Mia Wasikowska) revisits Wonderland and finds that she must save her dying best friend the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp) by traveling to the past and saving his long lost family. In so doing she may irrevocably break history. Also with Helena Bonham Carter, Leo Bill, Sacha Baron Cohen, Anne Hathaway and the voices of Alan Rickman, Paul Whitehouse, Matt Lucas and Timothy Sprall. Directed by James Bobin. People made up of fruit speak a few lines in their own language, accompanied by English subtitles. [1:48]
SEX/NUDITY 1 - A man holds a woman's hand and kisses the back of her neck; he tells her that he loves her, but she cries, snarls at him and he cowers.
► A 19th century ball includes women of all ages wearing moderately low-cut long dresses that reveal some cleavage.
VIOLENCE/GORE 4 - A tall man in black has moving gears in the back of his head and he falls to a stone floor as he hits his head on an archway (he is unhurt), he enters a room where open pocket watches engraved with names hang from the ceiling in rows and selects one, saying, "Your time's up," and the scene cuts to an elderly man who drops his face into his soup (he's dead); the man in black hangs the watch in a castle room for the deceased and reveals a large golden clock in the center of his chest.
► Four pirate ships fire several cannonballs at another ship and we see flashes of flame as we hear loud shots; one shot hits the railing of the fleeing ship and we see some wood fall as crew members shout and raise sails while a first mate argues with the captain; the captain climbs a mast in wind and rain to cut down a small sail with her sword as a man hangs from the yardarm by his hands before he lands safely on deck, the ship tilts over into the water and is scratched by rocks (we hear loud scratching and creaking and we see the pursuing ships damaged by the rocks as well).
► A giant Jabberwock breathes fire and we hear it roar as it burns down a city in a couple of scenes; flames fill the screen and we see blackened house frames and rubble as we hear loud screams of running men and women, charred trees burn and fall between running people and we hear that a family died in the fire.
► A man captures a woman in a room whose walls are covered with clocks and the clocks begin to break, the man suffers chest pains and we see sparks on his chest as the woman uses a time travel machine to escape and she wakes up in a mad house ward where we hear loud, mad screeching and shouting of gibberish coming from the hallways and a doctor enters and pronounces the woman to have female hysteria (he works for men that want her to become a file clerk instead of owning her own business); the doctor squirts a clear liquid from a huge hypodermic needle in close-up and aims for the woman's arm, but is distracted and places the hypo on a table, and the woman injects the man's arm instead and he passes out and she escapes.
► Everything and everyone becomes encased in thorny red spikes and roots and a man sticks his finger into a large clock embedded in his chest, but cannot make time reverse; a woman and a man try to outrun the destruction, but are captured and covered, the woman reaches forward to replace a sphere on its pedestal and everything stops, and then magic mirror portals are locked up with spikes and roots; a spark emanates from the sphere, electricity crackles and ripples, and the spikes and roots begin receding.
► A sick man lies under bed covers, almost dead with his hair white, his face grey, and his eyelids and lips a smoky color while a visitor cries beside the bed and he revives; his red hair and colorful face return as he moves his head and we hear a loudly cracking neck. A man is shown to be ill and dying and he stumbles about in his home (his face is greyish white, his red hair faded and his eyes circled in deep red); he argues with a visitor and the red eye circles turn black, as do his lips as he pushes her out the door, slamming it, and staggering into the back of his house. A man doubles over in pain and bolts of electricity spark across his chest several times as someone tries to change the past.
► A woman takes her sister through time to the door of their childhood bedroom, where they listen to the younger girl blame the older girl for stealing a tart; the younger woman will not apologize and the other bursts in, yelling "Liar," as she looks at her younger self and time begins to disintegrate.
► A woman steals a chromosphere from inside a giant clock and it becomes a time-traveling gyroscope with bolts of electricity swirling around it as she travels through wormhole tunnels of churning air and waters; a man chases her on a time-traveling handcar and screams and falls off-screen (we later see him land on a grassy area, unharmed). A woman swings off a roof using a flagpole rope and lands on top of a cab with two horses; she steals it as a man shouts and she calls out, "I plead insanity!"
► A woman tackles a frog wearing a suit who is carrying a grandfather clock, preventing a girl from running into it, but the girl falls, slides and bangs her head on a stone wall; the girl's head swells and the scene ends.
► A teenage girl with a huge head receives a crown that breaks on her stiff hair and she screams, "I hate you! I hate you all!" and a king says that she has bad attitudes, makes her sister the heir to the throne, and the first girl shouts and storms off; a woman in a crowd of onlookers says that someone should put a bag over the first girl's head (implying she is ugly) and people laugh. A woman with a huge head enters a castle and screams all the way down a hall; the castle's occupant gives her a music box and she slaps his face hard causing him to fall to the stone floor in a long shot. A woman berates two young sisters for eating too many tarts; the younger girl steals a tart and eats sloppily by her sister's bed as crumbs and pieces fall onto the rug and the woman blames the older girl, who shouts when the younger girl agrees the older girl did it, and storms out into the snow and ice. A man wearing black and a colorful man argue at a tea party and the man in black becomes annoyed at jokes about time, which he controls, and we see smoke rising out of his ears; the man in black makes time stop forever at 3:59 pm, so people can never have tea and when they try to stand up, they are blown back into their chairs by an unseen force. A woman screams loudly, "I want her head!" and, "Off with all of their heads!" (no one is beheaded).
► A woman says, "Revenge is mine!" as she rides away on a flying Jabberwock's foot, kissing its leg. A woman is told that a man is dying by two rabbits, twin boys, a mouse in a robe, a fish in a suit, a basset hound, and a Cheshire cat that appears and vanishes as it floats in the air. We hear that a shipping company CEO died. A woman argues with several men who laugh at her and insist that she become a file clerk. A woman argues with her mother, who vehemently denounces her work in a man's job. A man argues with a woman about changing the past. A man and a little boy argue and the boy walks away sadly. A woman tears up a contract and tells a man that he is not nice as she storms out of a meeting. A man and a woman cry as they say goodbye and she walks through a magic mirror. A man remarks that a woman and her deceased father were both mentally unbalanced.
► A woman, a man and several talking animals enter a dark, dimly lit, thorny tree castle where they find rooms filled with thorny roots, crawling bugs, beetles, worms, and centipedes that we see in close-up as a swarm of flies covers a woman's face briefly and we see white moths flying in groups. A woman shouts for guards to seize a man and they tie him in a chair beside a skeleton in armor with a sword sticking out of its chest; the man sinks in the chair and black circles appear around his sunken eyes as his face becomes darker.
► A castle room is filled with cobwebs and a grandfather clock, a woman walks inside the clock to find a tunnel of black smoke and she walks to a tall castle on a stone mountain surrounded by deep chasms; she jumps onto a giant second hand that sweeps a chasm wall and makes sparks and she enters the castle and finds tiny metal robots skittering and giggling. A woman sees robots with flaming eyes and glowing mouths and some of them chase her, but she escapes. Guards surround a family and we hear that they kidnapped them.
► A butterfly talks and convinces a woman to walk through a magic mirror, while men shout and pound on the locked door of the room; the woman passes through glass and whirling air to find herself very tiny and she sees a tiger rug that raises its head and snarls, she slides down a rope and falls onto a chessboard, a large egg falls off a table and cracks apart on the carpet, and the woman falls out a door into a sky and screams until she falls through trees to land in a thick flowerbed, unhurt (the woman later walks back and forth through the magic mirror).
► A mouse draws a sword, but puts it back. An animal resembling a bear roars into the camera, revealing pointy teeth. A large, red-faced, screaming infant struggles in a woman's arms in a close shot. Medium-sized robots gather into a huge monster robot that tries to repair a giant clock as tiny robots fall on a stone floor.
► A man finds his family magically shrunken to the size of ants clothed in rags inside an ant farm; he lifts the container and kisses the glass in close-up.
► A woman pulls the vegetable nose off a guard made of fruits and vegetables and eats the nose with a loud crunch. Two guards made of pineapples and other fruits say that the queen ate their elbows.
LANGUAGE 1 - Name-calling (stupid, imbeciles, dunderheads, silly nitwit, wonkers, idiots), exclamations (bloody, sheesh, my goodness, where the devil, silence, nonsense).
SUBSTANCE USE - A large hypodermic filled with clear liquid causes a man to fall unconscious when injected, and magic cake causes people to grow from any size to normal size. Men and women at a party hold champagne glasses and one man drinks from his glass.
DISCUSSION TOPICS - Sexism, Feminism, discrimination, independence, workplace inequality, misogyny, unethical business people, piracy, kidnapping, death, loss, determination, courage, friendship, love, trust, justice, belief, making dreams reality.
MESSAGE - Your best life course may begin with a dream.
CAVEATS
Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.
We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.
Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated, Special, Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.
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