Alice Through the Looking Glass

Courageous independent daring precociously proving itself under pirated extremes, sees its accomplishments rewarded with gender biased disdain as a scorned suitor attempts to neutralize it permanently, thereby aggrandizing his mediocrity, in terms of the status quo.

But in this petty and perilous predicament an alternative reality presents itself, more literary than commercial, but one within which Alice's (Mia Wasikowska) strength is regarded with respect and awe, the reflection becoming the recourse, as she instinctively exonerates Wonderland's sociocultural peculiarities.

Once more.

Agile assertions.

Temporal clemency.

The foundations are in place to enchant an everlasting imbroglio, feminine resiliency challenging unimaginative entitlement, multicultural magnanimity dousing insensitive cinders, but Alice Through the Looking Glass doesn't narratively impress, as it struggles to diversify both structurally and linguistically.

The script, while written for children, doesn't invest in creative unrestrictive dialogue, continuously employing stale predictable expressions, like Andrew Adamson's Prince Caspian, consequently subverting its versatile progressive message.

In an Alice in Wonderland film, it's fun to watch as all the strange characters have their defining moments as well, but in Through the Looking Glass many of them (Tweedledee [Matt Lucas], the Cheshire Cat [Stephen Fry], etc.) turn into background fluff, and offer sycophantic praise as opposed to startling interrogations.

Individuality sacrificed to establish unconscious group consensus.

Time (Sacha Baron Cohen) is also limited by stifling encumbrances, and the Mad Hatter (Hatter Tarrant Hightopp [Johnny Depp]) functions like a lamentable puppy instead of ingenious rarefied iridescence.

If he was destined to be a Hatter like his father before him, why wasn't Alice destined to end up like her mother before her?

Much too covertly traditional for a film advocating for gender equality, Through the Looking Glass has some fun moments, but doesn't inspire long lasting critical propensity.

Perhaps it's suggesting that if the powerful are indeed bland, powerful women must also be bland when occupying leading roles to avoid mass displacements, while structuring the order of things.

The familiarity in TTLG dulls its fantastic edge.

By dulling the fantasy, it counterproductively thinks outside the box, Alice excelling at out of the box thinking, but it's more compelling when she faces multiple encompassed challenges rather than one realistic and one fantastic, challenges which she duels with head on without encountering any serious setbacks.

The film does point out the ridiculous burdens independent women sometimes confront when expressing themselves, however, diagnoses of hysteria for instance, grossly unjust reductions.

The Muppets

And The Muppets takes us back to a more cheerful time during which humour didn't consist of making jokes about blood diamonds and friendship meant more than exchanging vitriolic insults ad infinitum. Within the spirit of the The Muppet Show is reincarnated and acclimatized to a 21st Century comedic aesthetic, and the two differing ethical approaches subtly duel before creating a productive popular counterpoint.

A musical synthesis.

The film starts out with an insufferable musical number that immediately challenged the ways in which I've been cynically indoctrinated by shows such as Family Guy over the years. "Is this movie going to be this incredibly cheesy?", thought I, as I appreciated the choreography and prepared for an internal struggle. But as it progresses and the distressed Muppets decide to get back together in order to perform once more and raise 10 million to save their dilapidated studio from a greedy oilperson (Chris Cooper as Tex Richman), their naïve hope and innocent determination took root deep down and energetically confronted years of psychological conditioning propagated by ruthless patriarchs (goodbye Berlusconi).

But writers Jason Segel and Nicholas Stoller, fully aware of their audience's manufactured predispositions, cut Kermit (Steve Whitmire) off when he begins to explain how different things were way back then, and have their characters kidnap Jack Black to host their comeback special, who sits tied to a chair throughout allegorically representing the psychological mechanizations of the 1990s and 2000s, his exchange with Fozzie (Eric Jacobson), priceless.

And to add to the seemingly hopeless situation environmentalists find themselves in these days, enough funds are not raised and the oilperson seems to have won and an attempt at transforming the filmic/televisual sphere seems to have failed.

But then that insufferable number from the film's opening act commences once more, only this time it isn't unbearable, it's entertaining and fun and cheerful and happy, and Tex Richman decides not to destroy the Muppet's studio, and everyone's getting along, and the Muppets are a hit, and they're singing, together, dancing and swinging, to the beat of their own communal drum, positive and revitalized.

Note the fortuitous relationship between this ending and the Keystone Pipeline Protests which caused the Obama Administration to delay making its decision. My gut's telling me that they delayed the decision hoping that when it comes time for reexamination, the protestors will not return and they'll be able to conduct their business as usual (the same strategy the powers that be used in Hamilton, Ontario, for decades, in order to construct the controversial Red Hill Valley Parkway). Hopefully a bit of The Muppets's spirit will remain in 2013, and the Keystone Pipeline agenda will once again unify environmentalists across North America.