‘Alice Through The Looking Glass’ directed by James Bobin and starring Anne Hathaway, Mia Wasikowska, Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, and Sacha Baron Cohen is the sequel to Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland (2010). The film follows Alice as she is thrown back into Wonderland on a quest to visit Time, steal something, time travel, and fix Johnny Depp’s career…… I mean fix whatever issue The Mad Hatter has…. who cares. My anticipation for this film was about as low as you could possibly get considering the fact that its 2010 counterpart is one of the only films i have ever just not finished because of how terrible it was. And in saying that i have to say this film was everything i expected it to be; dull, boring, and oh so painful to sit through. The plot was a mess revolving around characters who were terrible from the get-go and played by good actors putting in incredibly lacklustre performances. The film relied on a ‘PG’ Sacha Baron Cohen and Johnny Depp for its comedy so you can definitely check that off as a massive flop. It’s a visually impressive film i must say but that may be the only redeeming quality amongst a pile of shit.

The performances in this film, like the characters felt either plat or in some cases overacted to the point were it got annoying. I don’t think i need to point out ‘Johnny Sparrow Wonka Hatter Depp’ as being one of the lowlights of the movie do i?….. The guy has to get away from these stupid, awkward, quirky roles and do some good acting again because it really isn’t working at all. So much of the film hinges on his character as well as Alice so when you don’t care about him most of the plot ends up being completely pointless. Anne Hathaway so did not want to be there, her performance felt very half-arsed and was almost as terrible a character as Eddie Redmayne’s Balem Abrasax in Jupiter Ascending (2015). I couldn’t get behind any character at all throughout the film, Sacha Baron Cohen’s ‘Time’ was probably the most engaging character if i had to choose as he had the most interesting character arc but being in this film it didn’t make much of an impact.

Mia Wasikowska is a good actress and has a lot more talent than she was able to show off in this film, she was not the problem at all, just everything around her failed. It’s safe to say that once the plot had actually kicked off around 30 minutes or so into the film i had completely zoned out at that point. I tried to get back into it as it was the only aspect of the film that had a chance of keeping me awake but it got so messy and just straight up boring that i actually gave up entirely 3/4 in and just rode it out to the very end. No interesting characters, no emotional engagement, and no strong engaging plot points meant there was nothing to build this story on and so it inevitably failed.

If you enjoyed the first film and made it to the end then i guess this is going to be much of the same for you and you will probably get something more out of this mess. But with terrible characters, an awful script, and lacklustre performances the movie doesn’t offer any amount of enjoyment.

2/10