Alice Through the Looking Glass
Plot
After slipping through a mirror, Alice (Mia Wasikowska) finds herself back in Underland with the White Queen (Anne Hathaway), the Cheshire Cat, the White Rabbit, Tweedledee and Tweedledum. Her friends tell her that the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp) is in a funk over the loss of his family. Hoping to save his loved ones, Alice steals the Chronosphere from Time (Sacha Baron Cohen) to travel into the past. While there, she encounters the younger Hatter and the evil Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter).
Why The Glass Shatters
- Weak, unoriginal and clichéd story, its only film about saving the Hatter, who wasn't a really major character in the first film or in this one either, the plot about the ship is only in the very beginning and end. The entire plot is actually summed up over a cookie-cutter plot.
- Rather plastic-like effects, the CGI is far too cartoony and unrealistic.
- Rather bland acting from most actors, with the exception of some.
- Plot holes up the wazoo everywhere. An example is that it is never explained how the Red Queen managed to find Time's castle when the castle is supposedly impossible to get to, or why the Red Queen only captured the Hatter's family out of all the people at the Jabberwocky attack.
- Many scenes that are just pointless filler at best.
- For example, there is the asylum scene, which seems to exist only to provide an action sequence and/or material for the trailers, like it never mentioned again later on and has no apparent affect on subsequent plot points in Underland or the real world.
- We get to see the Mad Hatter as a kid, and let's just say, imagine how an insane, random and kooky madman would be as a kid and throw it out, because he's portrayed as a bland little kid.
- Most characters are kind of useless to the movie's plot. Only Alice, the Red Queen (to an extent at the end) and Time contribute to the events of the story, the rest of the characters are not in most of the film and feels underutilized and forgettable.
- Weird dialogue at times that can be confusing or just, well... weird.
- Johnny Depp still sucks as Tarrant Hightopp, the Mad Hatter. In fact, he has inspired internet memes about sad hatter.
- The White Queen (Anne Hathaway's character) is highly unlikable in this film, as she stole a tart and blamed the Red Queen, which is really dumb villain backstory.
- And, if you can believe it, that's the reason behind the war in the first place. People were decapitated and Underland turned into a hellhole because of a tart. All this does is beg the question "Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me, are you out of your mind?!"
- Absolutely ZERO faithful to the original source material from Lewis Carroll's novel of the same name apart from maybe one scene.
- This film overall started the downfall of Disney, along with the trend of horrible live-action remakes.
Redeeming Qualities
- Great soundtrack by Danny Elfman such as "Just Like Fire" by singer P!nk.
- Sacha Baron Cohen does an entertaining performance as Time, which makes him great villain, and the character does hold some Lewis Carroll-esque charm that the rest of the movie sorely lacks.
- The locations are very nice despite the plastic-like effects and CGI.
- It was nice to see Alan Rickman for the one last time, who performed Absolem The Butterfly (even if he barely get any screen-time), before his death in January 2016 and it pays tribute to him at the end of the movie.
- There is more color in the movie than the first one.
- Some characters are interesting, through not quite the best.
- The visual effects and CGI are still very spot-on to see, and a slight improvement over the first film's effects.
- Some of the performance are flawless, apart of Sacha Baron Cohen.
- The time rust scene is admittedly cool.
Reception
Alice Through the Looking Glass received generally negative reviews, with praise for its performances and visual effects, but criticism for its story and characters. Rotten Tomatoes reports that 29% of 254 reviews are positive, and the average rating is 4.57/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Alice Through the Looking Glass is just as visually impressive as its predecessor, but that isn't enough to cover for an underwhelming story that fails to live up to its classic characters". On Metacritic, the film holds an score of 34 out of 100, based on 42 reviews, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A–" on an A+ to F scale, the same grade earned by its predecessor, while those at PostTrak gave it an overall positive score of 79% and a "definite recommend" of 51%.