Alice Through the Looking Glass Review: Sequel That Should Have Been a Prequel

Alice Through the Looking Glass is a sequel that should have been a prequel. Instead, it takes Lewis Carroll’s beloved heroine and dumps her into a mess of visual effects, forced comedy and a plot that never quite decides what it wants to be. The result is a movie that feels less like a return to Wonderland and more like a desperate attempt to revive a franchise that never had one.

The film picks up years after the events of Alice in Wonderland, with Alice (Mia Wasikowska) grown up, restless and drifting through life. She works for a shipping company, but her heart belongs to the ocean and the stories of adventure she loved as a child. When she inherits a broken ship and a ticking clock, she finds herself pulled back through the looking glass into a world that has changed while she was away. There she meets a younger version of herself (Ella Frears), a band of talking animals, and a host of other characters who exist mostly to fill space between action sequences.

Trailer, via Disney Australia & New Zealand.

A Clock That Runs Out

The central device of the film is a giant grandfather clock that Alice must stop from striking midnight, a deadline that sends her rushing from one set piece to the next. The problem is that the clock serves the plot more than the plot serves the clock. Its existence is a gimmick, not a reason. Alice races against it, jumps over it, and finally tries to dismantle it, but the film never explains why midnight matters beyond the fact that it does.

The script, written by Linda Woolverton and directed by James Bobin, leans heavily on gags about time travel and the idea that Alice can change her past to fix her present. This should be a rich vein of material. Instead, it plays like a series of disconnected sketches, each one funnier than the last but none of them adding up to a coherent whole.

The Animals Carry the Weight

The supporting cast is better than the material around it. Johnny Depp returns as the Mad Hatter, now unhinged in a way that reads more as performance than character development. Anne Hathaway plays Absolem the caterpillar, a new character who serves as a guide through the film’s logic puzzles. Michael Sheen reprises his role as the White Rabbit, and Helena Bonham Carter returns as the Red Queen, though her scenes feel like leftovers from a previous draft rather than a fully realized villain.

The animals themselves get the best lines. The Cheshire Cat (voiced by Sacha Baron Cohen) delivers some genuinely funny moments, and the March Hare (Paul Whitehouse) provides physical comedy that lands more often than it misses. These performances keep the film watchable even when the story loses its footing.

A Ship Named Trelawney

The ship itself is a major character in Alice Through the Looking Glass. It is named the Trelawney, a reference to the pirate ship from Pirates of the Caribbean, and its presence is a nod to the film’s producer, Walt Disney Studios. The ship carries Alice across oceans and through storms, and it becomes a symbol of her journey from ordinary life to something more extraordinary. It is a clever touch, but it is also a reminder that the film is borrowing from elsewhere rather than building its own identity.

The ship also anchors some of the film’s best action sequences. A chase across its deck, a battle with a sea monster, and a final confrontation that requires Alice to outthink the clock all benefit from the practical filmmaking style that defined the original. The effects are competent, but they are used to serve the story rather than dazzle for their own sake.

The Time Travel Gimmick

The time travel concept is the film’s biggest weakness. Alice can visit her past and her future, but the rules of how she does it are never made clear. One moment she is a child again, the next she is an adult in a parallel timeline. The film asks us to accept that she can change history, but it never shows us how that change affects the world around her. The clock strikes midnight, the world resets, and Alice is left to wonder if any of it mattered.

This is a structural failure, not a stylistic one. The film is not poorly made in the sense of bad cinematography or poor editing. It is poorly conceived. The time travel device is a plot contrivance, and it feels like one.

The Red Queen’s Revenge

The Red Queen is a strange case. In the original film, she was a memorable villain, cruel and theatrical. Here, she is reduced to a plot device. Her scenes are few, her motives are vague, and her final confrontation with Alice feels like a placeholder rather than a climax. The film spends so much time setting up a conflict that it forgets to deliver one.

The film also introduces a new villain in the form of the Knave of Hearts (played by Rhys Ifans). He is a threat to Alice’s family, a reason for her to return to the looking glass world, but his presence is underwritten. He is a shadowy figure with a grudge, but the film never makes his anger personal enough to ground the stakes.

Ella Frears as Young Alice

One bright spot is Ella Frears, who plays young Alice. Her scenes are rare, but they are effective. Seeing Alice as a child, curious and brave, reminds us why we fell in love with the character in the first place. The film’s failure to sustain that energy across its runtime is its biggest disappointment. It knows how to capture the spirit of Wonderland in a single scene, but it cannot hold onto that spirit for two hours.

The comparison is stark:

Alice Through the Looking Glass is not a disaster, but it is a failure of ambition. It has the budget, the talent, and the source material to be something special. Instead, it settles for being a noisy, rushed cash grab. The film is watchable in patches, charming in moments, and occasionally clever, but it never earns the confidence it demands.

The final verdict is clear. Alice Through the Looking Glass is a sequel that should have been a prequel, a film that tried to recapture magic it did not understand. It is a 3.4 out of 10.

Alice Through the Looking Glass · Disney · Lewis Carroll · Mia Wasikowska · movie review