Somewhere, Lewis Carroll Is Throwing Up

In this abominable adaptation of “Alice Through the Looking Glass,” Alice is not a little girl, but a full-grown woman with a rewarding career as a sea captain. The movie is bloated, boring and over-laden with special effects. “Alice Through the Looking Glass” is a sequel to Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland,” and though it’s directed by James Bobin (“The Muppets”), it has the Burton look — the murky interiors, the garish costumes and the makeup that’s somewhere between scary and comical, like a nightmare about clowns. It’s clearly the product of much thought and investment, and there are flickers of brilliance. The audience is expected to invest in a life and death adventure to insure the safety of characters we haven’t met — and to preserve the friendship between Alice and a hat-wearing whack-job. The looking glass, in this adaptation, is not a dive into the unconscious, but rather a means of time travel. Alice has to meet up with Time (Sacha Baron Cohen), steal a magic orb that turns into a time machine and then change the course of events. The screenplay is really just an excuse for visuals, but without a purpose behind the visuals, they quickly become as dull as a laser show, or a computer screen saver. In the absence of anything substantial to cling to, the movie tries to amuse with extraneous things. Eduard Strauss’ “Bahn Frei,” best known as the theme song to Jean Shepherd’s old radio show, turns up as background music at a dinner party, but slowed down and arranged for strings.