Alice Through The Looking Glass was the most miserable box office bomb – both financially and review wise – of 2016. It lost an estimated & massive 80 million US dollars, which looks even worse considering that its predecessor Alice in Wonderland clocked in a supremely impressive 1 billion dollars on a budget on 250 million.
If you haven’t watched it, let your kids watch it. Only kids would love, and even then, only those who are bored, without internet and can only watch it to escape punishment. Should a review be this harsh? I mean, the movie stars Johnny Depp of all people….hmm…so i put all the reviews aside, dimmed the lights, cleared my mind, and set ablaze my laptop with a fantastic feeling that everyone got it wrong and i should be the one to stand up for Alice.
Granted its starts off in a rather intriguing way. Alice is grown up, a captain, somewhere in an ocean, around 1875, with two ships bearing hard on her ship, shooting cannons at her from left and right, and her only escape being a risky reef of shallow rocks. Yes despite the impossible, Alice rallies her team, daring them directly to do the impossible by putting up all sails and narrowly, literally by a whisker, escaping danger and safe passage home.
Her reception is not so welcome. She hears news that will definitely affect her next voyage. Determined, she sets out to meet the board of directors in a quest to fight for her right to sail again….after witnessing her magnificent battle at sea the audience are clamoring for a fight…for some rebellion…and here starts the disappointment…
Instead she escapes through a ‘looking glass’ mirror 🙁 and i am almost like: what? what is happening? She is back in Wonderland just like, and on wards she goes, meeting everyone, literally FORGETTING HER QUEST for sailing, and starting another wonderland quest for helping The Hatter (Johnny Depp) find his long lost family.
Kids might accept such an irrational logic or flow, but ticket sales tell the truth. The movie sucked beyond belief, saved a tiny bit by a single scene where we see The Red Queen and The White Queen back in time as kids and one commits a crime and blames the other, leading to a hair disaster – the only reason why this movie was made??
Disney, if you spend 170 million dollars, please spare the story line with some consistency, grow the characters, stop casting the courageous sailors to sea without a thought after the audience establishes an emotional connection with them, and most importantly, give the movie only ONE purpose…not two, or three adventures entwined in one.
To copy the work of a genius who made the first film, i.e director Tim Burton, is well, proved impossible.
Rated 1 out of 10
