Film Review: "A Wrinkle In Time" aims high and falls short
A sci-fi fantasy children’s novel considered to be “unfilmable”, acclaimed director Ava DuVernay took a stab at adapting A Wrinkle In Time anyway. DuVernay is most notable for her directorial work for Selma, the powerful and emotionally hard-hitting MLK biopic. Her documentary 13th is equally powerful.
I wish she had used the clout from those films to make something else, literally anything else, because her cinematic translation of A Wrinkle In Time's text is platitudinous gobbledygook. Are solemn proclamations of “Be a warrior” really going to inspire anybody? What might have been if she had written the screenplay herself? But she didn't. And what she's been tasked with bringing to life sucks.
The broad strokes are interesting enough. Three magical beings and three children try to locate a missing scientist (Chris Pine), who’s discovered the secret to instantaneously traveling through space and time. Incidentally, the secret is love. I swear to you I am not making that up. I guess you can wield the powers of a god if you cared hard enough.
Anyway, they hop through various dimensions of all sorts of colours and strange, unconvincing textures – mostly computer generated, of course. They’re challenged by a celestial being of immense power, a thing – or It, as it’s called - that embodies and spreads anti-love across the universe: despair, hate, fear, all that. Life lessons about self-love are learned, then repeated, then repeated again, just to make sure the kids in the audience will have something nice to take home.
There’s nothing wrong with a children's film that's obvious. There's nothing wrong with corniness, especially when irony has never been more fashionable than it is right now. However, underneath the colourful effects and wonderfully weird designs, lie some pathetically wilted flowers. Its life-affirming themes are only pronounced, never felt.
To wit: Inside Out. That story gradually revealed itself to be about how joy can’t exist without sadness. It was a simple lesson told flawlessly, an intricate lattice of visual gags, character development, and music. Just because a kid could grasp that message, doesn’t mean that kind of cinematic storytelling is easy or simplistic. On the other hand, A Wrinkle In Time assumes it is easy and simplistic, when our young protagonist Meg Murray, who heretofore had been filled with self-doubt and self-loathing, fulfills her character arc by defiantly screaming at the monstrous It that she’s worthy of love. It’s a fine sentiment and nothing more. It’s unsatisfying because I don't know what her story was about other than dimension hopping with some goofballs. The connective tissue just isn’t there.
Usually, you can depend on the veteran actors to make a disposable fantasy adventure film watchable. But man, Reese Witherspoon and Mindy Kaling are simply awful in this. Awful. Witherspoon’s performative hipster kookiness is all that her Mrs. Whatsit is, and Mindy Kaling as Mrs. Who doesn't even try to elevate silly dialogue consisting solely of quotes from famous historical figures like Ghandi...and Lin-Manuel Miranda. Oprah as Mrs. Which, though the most outlandish, apparently plucked from an episode of Dragon Ball Z, is quite convincing due to her naturally regal presence and warm charisma. But as three fashionable spiritual guides, they lack gravitas and wisdom.
Storm Reid as Meg, the daughter of the missing scientist, shows a lot of promise as an actor. If it weren’t for her sympathetic and relatively subtle performance, A Wrinkle In Time would be unendurable. Her two companions, a dreamy Prince Charming-type classmate, and a precocious little genius irritant, are dead weight. Chris Pine isn’t in many scenes, but he’s likeable. That’s about all you could say about him. Everyone but Storm Reid bangs out the same one note, stretching a couple of quirks to its absolute breaking point. It’s tough to say whether this is due to bad direction or a bad script.
What a disappointment.
