Alice Through the Looking Glass Review: Better Than the Original, But Still a CGI Mess

Film critic Sean Patrick reviews Alice Through the Looking Glass. It’s better than Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, but still overwhelmed by CGI and odd performances.

By Sean Patrick, Regional Media Film Critic

Released in 2016, Alice Through the Looking Glass arrives as the sequel to Tim Burton’s 2010 Alice in Wonderland—a film I genuinely despised. I still do, six years later. That original outing was an irritating display of cloying whimsy, ugly CGI, and grating performances—particularly from Johnny Depp.

Fortunately, Alice Through the Looking Glass, directed by James Bobin, manages to rise above its predecessor—though only barely.

Plot Summary

This time around, the story hinges on the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp), who is falling into a deep melancholy. He believes his long-lost family, presumed dead, might still be alive. When no one believes him, he begins to fade away both emotionally and physically. Alice (Mia Wasikowska) must travel back in time to uncover the truth.

To do this, she seeks help from Time himself, played by Sacha Baron Cohen. In one surprisingly moving scene, Cohen and Wasikowska manage a rare emotional connection—one of the only genuinely effective moments in the film.

Performance & Visuals

But one scene isn’t enough to save a movie so weighed down by excessive CGI. Nothing in this film feels tangible. Even basic set pieces—like handrails—are rendered digitally. The result is a visually exhausting film that offers little in the way of immersion or wonder.

Johnny Depp’s portrayal of the Mad Hatter continues to be aggressively grating. His performance, like much of the film, is loud, chaotic, and difficult to endure.

Final Verdict

Alice Through the Looking Glass is not a good movie. It is, however, a less bad movie than its predecessor. That’s the best I can say. While it has a moment or two of clarity, they’re quickly swallowed by the same garish spectacle that plagued the first film.

Rating: ⭐⭐☆☆☆ (2/5)

I’m Sean Patrick. Thanks for reading.

Alice Through the Looking Glass, Movie Review, Johnny Depp, Mia Wasikowska, Sacha Baron Cohen, Disney Movies, Tim Burton, Film Critic, CGI, Fantasy Films, Sequel Review

Movie Review: Alice in Wonderland

Alice in Wonderland (2010)

Directed by Tim Burton 

Written by Linda Woolverton

Starring Johnny Depp, Mia Wasikowska, Helena Bonham Carter, Tim Pigott Smith, Anne Hathaway

Release Date March 5th, 2010

Published March 4th, 2010

The story of Alice in Wonderland is one of a teenage girl tripping down a rabbit hole into a magical land where adventure awaits. The sub-story however, is not onscreen but behind the scenes. It is an unfortunate story of a once promising filmmaker with the potential of a game changer but who sadly lost his way.

In Alice in Wonderland Tim Burton demonstrates that the promise he showed as a filmmaker who deftly combined unique characters with fabulous visuals has now devolved into a style over substance approach better at aping other storytellers’ visions but lacking what made their stories lasting and memorable.

The latest attempt to bring Lewis Carroll's wildest dreams to life stars newcomer Ali Wasikowska as Alice a teenage girl of privilege destined to marry a doofusy Lord (Tim Pigott Smith) and live out a sad existence as his concubine and servant. Naturally, Alice is non-plussed about this idea.

As Lord doofus ahem Lord Ascot goes to one knee in front of everyone they both know Alice runs off. It's not merely that she is horrified about getting engaged to such a dope, she also happened to see a strange looking white rabbit who seemed to be trying to get her attention. Following the rabbit, Alice finds herself at a rabbit hole which she falls into and winds up in Underland.

Underland is a magical, bizarre world of strange characters who act as if they know who she is, as if she'd been here before. Indeed she has but she doesn't quite remember it, even after being reintroduced to her friend the wild haired, hair-brain the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp) who informs her of a particularly dangerous destiny ahead of her in in Underland.

This is extraordinarily rich material for a visual artist like Tim Burton and he dives right in with broad strokes of CGI landscapes and eccentric makeup and costumes. As Burton did with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Sweeney Todd he takes his pal Johnny Depp dresses him in wacky costumes and hair and aims to set him loose in a crazy looking world.

The formula unfortunately has lost its flavor in Alice in Wonderland. Both Burton and Johnny Depp seem to have made Alice on auto pilot relying on the things they have done before to carry this film to completion while bringing little new effort to bare. Alice in Wonderland is a lazy, laconic knockoff of what Burton and Depp have done before.

The diminishing returns in the career of Tim Burton are one of the saddest stories to be told. After arriving with astonishing promise in the 1980's, Burton has spent the past decade repeating himself with less and less interest. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a movie I really liked but received much fair criticism. Sweeney Todd wasn't great but was at the least a bit daring in approach.

Alice in Wonderland is simply bad. The filmmaking is lax from the cheap looking CGI to the strangely muted colors. The pace is almost non-existent, the movie crawls from scene to boring scene relying on our familiarity with Lewis Carroll's story to keep us involved.

The 3D aspect of Alice in Wonderland is utterly unnecessary and only serves to bring forward unfortunate comparisons to James Cameron's Avatar which from a visual standpoint blows Alice out of the water, exposing the films sluggish CGI and weak 3D posing.

It is clear now that the reason Tim Burton retreads so many famous stories isn't a wont to bring classic literature to the masses but mere laziness. Famous source material allows Burton to focus on creating fantastic new worlds visually or at least that's the theory. 

In Alice in Wonderland however, the famous source material gives Burton the opportunity to relax and recreate the things he's done in previous works with little invention on his part. The approach extends to his star pal Johnny Depp whose lackadaisical Mad Hatter is a visual representation of the laziness of the director and indeed the production as a whole.

Alice in Wonderland is the first major disappointment of 2010, a lazy rehash of a well known story by a director resting on his reputation. It is heartbreaking to see what has become of the talent of Tim Burton. So much promise unfulfilled. We will always have Edward Scissorhands to remember him by but what of the future, duller, droopy remakes of other people's works with whatever existing tech best allows him to rest on his rep. It's just sad.