Alice Through the Looking Glass review: An unsalvageable mess

Alice Through the Looking Glass, the sequel to Tim Burton's 2010 Alice in Wonderland, isn't just outstandingly boring and mediocre, but there seems to be little reason for it to actually exist. The characters take a two-hour journey through the mystical land of Wonderland, but don't experience any growth. The blatant manipulative tactic to get audiences to care about someone we didn't the first time around just screams of desperation.

Alice in Wonderland itself felt unnecessary when it was released, so it's baffling why Disney would think the film needed a sequel six years later, but here we are.

Unfortunately, the result is just as disappointing as to be expected, with little to be excited about and even less of a reason to watch this in theaters.

Quite frankly, no one should have to suffer through this film

When Alice isn't in Wonderland, the story focuses on her constant conflict with him and her conversations with her mother, who would like to see her act how a proper lady should in that time period. Alice, however, refuses to be silent and abide by the archaic rules that are enforced upon her, choosing to fight the both of them the entire way until she can get what she wants. At one point, she's admitted to a psychiatric ward and diagnosed as suffering from female hysteria, a common "affliction" that women were misdiagnosed with by doctors during the early nineteenth century, for attempting to break out of the mold.

The idea that Condon tries, rather successfully, to get across is that the early nineteenth century was not a great period for women who didn't want to abide by societal rules imposed on them. Instead of making Alice a victim to her time period, Condon uses her as one of the first renegade icons to take on those now ridiculous ideologies.

Unfortunately, the portrayal of Alice as a renegade character, a bottle rocket of determination and fight, doesn't do much to save the movie. It was nice, however, to see the film embrace and explore the idea that a led female character could succeed despite living in an oppressive society that doesn't want her to.

Alice Through the Looking Glass could have been something, well, if not spectacular, at least decent, but it doesn't even manage to accomplish that. There's little about this movie that warrants buying a ticket to see it in theaters, and there's even less of a reason to seek it out once it's available on demand or through Netflix.

The bottom line is that there was no reason this movie needed to exist outside of Disney hoping to make some extra cash off of it and those holding nostalgic adoration for Burton's original movie. The cash grab is blatantly obvious and neither Disney nor the cast of the film appear to even try to hide it.

Alice Through the Looking Glass is a disastrous result of an industry that doesn't believe a film is successful unless it has a sequel, even if that sequel reeks of rancidness upon its release. Alice went through the looking glass and disappeared into an entirely new world, leaving the real world behind her. It's a shame she came back.