Alice in Wonderland Review, Through the Looking Glass

This weekend I saw Alice in Wonderland. I don’t want to spoil anything but I do want to give a warning. The movie is being advertised as something it is not and because of this a lot of people who see this movie come out disappointed. It’s not because it’s bad or not as good as it should be, it’s because the movie is being touted as a retelling or reimagining of the original story, when in fact it is a sequel to the original Disney film, and actually aalgmation of the Second book in the series called Through the Looking Glass and the original Alice in Wonderland.

Unfortunately the general populace had no idea Alice in Wonderland is based on a book, let alone that it has a sequel. Due to this misrepresentation people go into this movie expecting fun and wackiness and instead get toned down surrealism and action, which goes in line with the second book but not the story people were expecting to see.

As usual everyone touts Johnny Depps performance as amazing because that’s just what people do, but personally I didn’t see anything special. He basically just combined Jack Sparrow with his Willy Wonka, shifting between the two at random, sometimes to the point of inaudibility. There were two instances that his character spoke and I had no idea what he said, and neither did anyone else in the theater. Alice knew though, and it seemed important each time, so that was annoying. Speaking of Alice, she was spectacular. I really think the actress did an excellent Job, no matter how ridiculous or mundane the situation she stepped up to the plate and hit a home run every time.


The movie it’s self was less spell binding, but I feel like that was aided by the fact that I expected it to be Alice in Wonderland and Not Adventure’s in Wonderland: Through the Looking Glass. Now that I understand this, I feel like I need to see it again in order to give a fair review.

At this point, I feel like watching the original Disney film may help too since this film was almost a direct sequel to that. Coincidentally (eye roll) Disney is releasing the original Alice in Wonderland cartoon from the Disney Vault on March, 30th. After all the money the movie made this weekend, I have no doubts that the Disney movie will also fly off the shelves so I suggest taking it easy on yourselves and just getting it from Amazon, and why not ? It’s 20 bucks !