Movie Reviewed: A Wrinkle in Time

Director: Ava DuVernay

Date: 16 March 2018

jamesintexas rating: **



To cut to the heart of the matter, A Wrinkle in Time is not as strongly rendered or imagined as it could be, and some of the casting weighs the film down, as does some strange stalling of the momentum in an otherwise creative and beautiful film.  The film had an unbelievable build-up of anticipation from its filming to its previews, and it fails to soar as promised despite so many smart and creative people associated with it.  The film is just okay, and it is not one that I would return to.

A young girl named Meg (Storm Reid) loses her scientist father Mr. Murry (Chris Pine) to a strange time accident of sorts, and their family is bereft with young Charles Wallace (Deric McCabe) barely remembering him and her scientist mom Mrs. Murry (Gugu Mbatha-Rawa) dealing with her grief and loss.  Three Mrs. descend upon her, offering up oblique clues about her father's whereabouts and a message she has been sent from him.  Here is the film's major misstep.  I don't know if casting Reese Witherspoon, Mindy Kaling, and Oprah Winfrey plays as well as it could or should.  Witherspoon seems particularly off-key in her scenes, which just didn't work for me, and Oprah inhabits a gigantic character, towering above everyone one and somewhat aloof.  Kaling is a delight with some marvelous updates to her quotation-spouting Mrs. Who.  But, I don't know why it does not fully work.  I like the idea of traveling beautiful, strange worlds to see someone like Happy Medium (Zach Galifianakis), but instead of something Oz-like and wondrous, it kind of just loses its way, feels ho-hum, and never really fully gets off the ground.  Reid is fantastic here, but the visuals mixed with the trajectory of the story don't fully work for me. 

I did not read the novel as a child, but as an adult, I remember it being fully realized and powerful.  I do not know if the film collapsed under the weight of its own high expectations because Ava DuVernay is a tremendous director.  I recently revisited Selma with its undeniable power and assemblage of scenes building and building toward catharsis.  I think that thisfilm lost its way, and I wonder if the assemblage of talent and possibility and expectation did not bring out the best in this project.  Would a leaner, less starry A Wrinkle in Time have worked?  Maybe so.  Regardless, I am on board with Ava DuVernay, wherever she goes next, but I do not think this film is reflective of her power as an artist or a storyteller.