The Plot: With the help of three witches a young girl named Meg, her friend Calvin, and her younger brother Charles Wallace must literally travel to the far reaches of the universe in order to find Meg and Charles's long-lost father, a scientist, who transported himself and became lost in this unknown region of time and space.
In all honesty, I was slightly intrigued by this movie with the couple of trailers I've seen. Fantasy is my all time favorite film genre and so to see this abstract, but light-hearted looking fairy tale of a movie left me interested. There was mystery to the story and I liked how it was looking from a visual perspective. I do think Disney has been producing great content as of recent and it was great to see on social media that Ava DuVernay had passion for directing this project. I still have yet to see her latest films like Selma for I've heard nothing, but good things.
I will say what worked about A Wrinkle In Time was the visual look of it. If anything, DuVernay is able to develop a very good-looking movie with beautiful shot composition and very vibrant colors. The visual effects were also very impressive and were able to bring me into some scenes of the movie. But, oh dear, does it pain me to say that the positive aspects pretty much amount to nothing because A Wrinkle In Time is the worst film I've seen so far this year.
Like I said earlier it's an abstract fantasy movie and in the case of something like Inception or The Matrix, some of the crazy, or confusing, ideas introduced that built the world of the film up took its time to give viewers a feel of it. There was an appropriate use of exposition and since striking elements of the story were being brought to fruition it gave audiences the opportunity to explore new ideas and understand and enjoy the story more. Here, I feel the fantasy aspects that are explained in this film are explained too little and too much. There were scenes where I felt like some key aspects were merely glossed over or also explained in a lengthy, dramatic, and complex fashion that just made things feel more convoluted than they already were.
I had the impression that critics weren't liking it because it was confusing with all the layers involved in its story that made it more of a convoluted mess. Apparently, it was just convoluted because it just didn't know how to tell its story. I know this movie was getting bad reception, but I wanted to give it the benefit of the doubt. I'm also starting to understand why it wasn't a good adaptation of its original source material, the novel. I never read the book, but watching the movie made me understand what it was missing. At least with a book, a reader can take its time and process these complex aspects through reading it and visualizing it. With a film as disjointed as this, it probably proves to show that this was better for literature.
Speaking of disjointed the pacing was all the over the place where there's not really build up to important scenes and they transition in the blink of an eye. As a scene plays out it kind of meanders until it transitions into another scene. Like in the first act we're introduced to those witch characters played by Reese Witherspoon and Mindy Kaling, each had their own scene. One of the main characters this young boy named Charles Wallace knows who they are, but there's never any indication early on that he was communicating with these characters. They are just introduced out of nowhere and since these are main characters they deserve to have more build-up, so that those scenes have purpose.
I feel like every scene in this movie were just some randoms because the way this film was written and directed made every scene feel less important than it should've been. I wanted to be invested. I love complex storytelling and I like most of the actors in this movie and the director seems passionate from the positive word of mouth I heard from her previous work. The story couldn't come across as anything and the acting to go along with it was sometimes tolerable, but terribly executed.
All I saw were bland stereotypes and/or watered down versions of characters I've seen in other movies. Oprah was another Morpheus. Reese Witherspoon played an extremely ditsy version of Glinda the Good Witch. While she was good at bringing some emotion to her role, Storm Reid as Meg was just another bland outcast of a lead character. Levi Miller was the most boring side character/love interest I've probably ever seen. He was there to be that one love interest and tell Meg he liked her hair. Deric McCabe as Meg's younger brother Charles Wallace did alright at times but could be obnoxious after a while. Chris Pine and Gugu Mbatha-Raw who play Meg and Charles's parents were probably the only great actors in this movie but had very little screen time.
A Wrinkle In Time can look impressive from a visual perspective but is one hot mess in terms of executing a beyond sophisticated sci-fi/fantasy story that was better suited as literature and in a single viewing you don't need to read the book to understand that.
Verdict: D-
I think perhaps young kids could enjoy watching it for it does have its fair share of some good looking spectacle, but the way the substance is handled it was obvious to me that it was very jumbled. However, I'm still optimistic about Ava DuVernay's career. I really like her passion and still interested to watch her previous work. She was probably given a bad script and had a tight schedule with this movie. Whatever the case may be I'm still optimistic for the future of DuVernay's career as well as what Disney releases.
Thank you all for reading and apologies for the lack of Marvel reviews as of recent. Been very busy in life, so I hope to give you all a bunch of Marvel reviews in one week and not to mention with Infinity War releasing a week early. So I haven't given up those. Let's do it!
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