Alice Through the Looking Glass - D-

Quick Hit: Lacking the solid direction that made the movie an affair that was worth watching, there isn’t much here to enjoy.

​*Sigh* I’m a bit ashamed to admit that I was excited to see this movie. Though I definitely didn’t love the first one, I enjoyed enough of it to want to see more. But, after the first few minutes of this drab fest, I realized that I was in store for a very different film.

Through the Looking Glass isn’t nearly the film that the first attempted to be. The whole thing feels so safe, like a series of check boxes. Though it copies some of the previous style, by presenting a visually stunning Wonderland and a fantastic Ocean’s of Time representation, overall, the film doesn’t pop nearly as much as 

This poster freaks me out a bit. There is something wrong with the perspective and it make Hatter look strange.

the previous one, even when seen in the 2D formats side by side. Instead, some of the fear has been taken out, with far less of a bad guy being presented, and more Alice just being… well, stubborn Alice.

Though almost the entire cast has returned from the first film, very few of them are really given anything to do. Hatter (Johnny Depp) is the center of the film, as he is the entire reason that Alice returns to Wonderland. Despite this, he is in very few scenes, and the scenes that he is in are lifeless and dull. Anne 

Hathaway, who had quite a few breathy lines as the White Queen to deliver in the last film, is pushed aside as well. Even Bonham Carter as the Red Queen is given almost nothing but a few of her trademark lines. I thought that Sasha Baron Cohen did a good job as Time, but the script that was given to him almost sounded like one of his Ali G skits. He makes himself entertaining, but he could have been so much more.

I personally think that the main problem with this movie is that so much of the last film bordered on nightmare fuel for some of the younger viewers. Between the Bandersnatch and the Jabberwokke, there was a lot of fear presented (it was Tim Burton as director, after all). This sequel waters those characters down to brief appearances that are barely fearful. There is very little in this movies that isn’t family friendly, and that’s one of my problems with it – it seems to be straddling the line between a movie for adults and a movie for kids. I don’t have a problem with line straddling when done well (see: almost any Pixar film), but when you try to mix the two unsuccessfully, what you get is both parties bored to tears.

I think that overall, this movie lacked a lot of things. If it wasn’t for the colorations and the action, I’d probably give this an “F”. But technically, the movie is very well made. The animation is flawlessly executed and the effects are brilliant. This isn’t enough to make the movie good though.

I’m going to end by giving this movie a “D-“. I wish I could have enjoyed it more.

Check out what I thought about the original here.

For more on this film, check out IMDB.