Alice Through the Looking Glass seems to have followed the recent trend of time travel and meeting up with younger characters to provide unnecessary backstory, *Cough* X-Men: Days of Future Past *Cough*. Director James Bobin decided to create a whole new story line which included a dragon and Sacha Baron Cohen as time itself, yes time is a living thing now. This didn’t impress the die hard Alice fans, or anyone for that matter. The story itself was confusing and even for a fantasy movie, illogical.

The movie starts off with a boat chase between pirates and a familiar face, Alice Kingsleigh as a ship captain. Her modern life added on yet another story line that seems like it could’ve been a movie itself. She basically has lost everything and everyone when she returns, except for her mother played by Lindsay Duncan. This of course leads her right back to Wonderland where Johnny Depp’s Mad Hatter is suffering from events of the past. He believes that his family survived a dragon attack in his earlier years. All of his friends and returning characters such as the White Queen, White Rabbit, and the whole gang.

Alice, being Alice, knows it’s her job to make Hatter Better.  What ensues is layers upon layers of Hatter’s past, but also adding on to the past of every single character which leads to new plot after new plot. Just a warning here too, there is a scene with just time puns. For at least two minutes.

There are a few things that can be taken away from this movie, Sacha Baron Cohen being one of them. No matter what puns are made at his expense, he’s a great new character that provides good humor and a backbone to the entire time travel concept. In all honesty, a few of the puns are actually good. The visuals are pretty amazing, all the makeup and costumes are done well, and there isn’t any actor’s performance who sticks out as being especially below par. The fundamentals were all there, the story itself just fell short.

For die hard fans who want to see the movie should see it. It’s still an Alice movie, just not one at the same level as Alice in Wonderland. If the viewer is looking for a special fantasy tale, this movie isn’t for them.

Rating: 3 out of 5

You can  purchase tickets Here