‘Alice through the Looking Glass’ is one ride you’ll want to get off

“Alice through the Looking Glass” is a spectacular dud. Spectacular, yes, but a dud all the same.

It’s a movie so visually overstuffed that your eyes may feel like they need to go on a diet. And just like when you overeat, you also may have a hard time staying awake. For all its frenetic pace, this two-hour Disney sequel is a slog.

In fact, there’s no good reason for this movie to exist, except one. Its predecessor – the 2010 “Alice in Wonderland” – made a shocking $1.4 billion. One of the first films to capitalize on the recent resurgence of 3-D, “Alice” took full advantage of Tim Burton’s flair for distinctive and outrageous imagery. The story didn’t have much to do with Lewis Carroll’s classic, but wow, that woozy art direction, those crazy costumes and hair and makeup, and Johnny Depp to boot, back when Depp was still big box-office.

That kind of financial success demands a follow-up and that’s why we have “Alice Through the Looking Glass,” another supposed adaptation that has even less to do with Lewis Carroll. Borrowing little more than its title from the original source, this sequel makes up a story out of whole cloth, something about Alice having to travel back in time to rescue the Mad Hatter’s family from annihilation.

The plot doesn’t really matter anyway because it’s mostly there to provide the scaffolding for a series of elaborate action set pieces. Why a children’s classic known for its whimsy and verbal wit needs spectacular action sequences is beyond me but the movie is so busy hurtling through enormous CGI landscapes, it’s clear producer Tim Burton thought that question was beside the point. This is first and foremost a 3-D IMAX film, and wit and whimsy are not that format’s strong suit.

The chases scenes are so frequent and the bouts of all-out destruction are so all-out that’d you’d be forgiven if you occasionally thought you were watching a Victorian-era Transformers or Marvel comic book film. A steampunk roller coaster ride could still make a decent movie, I suppose, but this particular ride never picks up enough speed to get exciting. It just clatters a lot and seems to go on and on and on.

This is one Disney ride you’ll want to get off long before it’s over.