Review – A Wrinkle in Time

Watching A Wrinkle in Time was one of the most frustrating experiences I’ve had at the movies in a long, long time.  Based on the critically acclaimed book and being backed by Disney, the film boasts a stellar cast and is directed by the great Ava DuVernay, who was given a large budget for the first time in her career.  This had the makings of something special.

But something special it is not.  A Wrinkle in Time is an absolute mess.  A perplexing movie that under-utilizes its actors and features some awful story-telling, editing, and has no emotion whatsoever.

While watching the movie, I felt like I missed twenty minutes of the plot.  The movie does a terrible job of establishing the world we are in, the characters we are given, and the stakes.  From what I got, it’s about Meg (Storm Reid), a girl who’s father (Chris Pine) disappeared four years ago, which has put a strain on her, her brother, Charles Wallace (Deric McCabe, and yes, they call him Charles Wallace THE ENTIRE MOVIE), and their mother (Gugu Mbatha-Raw).  On a random school night, Mrs. Whatsit (Reese Witherspoon), a fairy-like figure who is apparently best friends with Charles Wallace, shows up to Storm’s house and starts a chain of events that eventually leads Meg, Charles Wallace, and Meg’s school friend, Calvin (Levi Miller) on a cross-dimensional journey to find her father and save Earth from a dark entity known as The It (sadly, The It is not Pennywise the clown).

I have a million questions about the actions that happen in this movie.  Like why is Charles Wallace great friends with Mrs. Whatsit and the other mythical beings?  What are the new universes and what is the science behind it?  Why do they constantly call him Charles Wallace Charles Wallace instead of just Charles or any version of just his first name?  So many things happen without context or without conflict that they either don’t make sense or aren’t established enough for us to care.  This isn’t a knock on DuVernay as a director, but more on the screenwriters and the editing.  With Disney behind the movie, you know that they ran most of the show and that it was their call to have this movie run under two hours (one hour 49 minutes to be exact).  If this movie had been a little over two hours, maybe two hours and ten minutes, that extra twenty minutes would have helped immensely.  That twenty minutes could have been used to develop the characters better, add more depth to the plot, or given us more exposition as to what these new universes are.

With the underdevelopment of just about everything, the characters are so uninteresting that they act more as place fillers that actual people.  What this causes is no emotion throughout the film.  Like most movies, A Wrinkle in Time is building towards something big and there is the overarching journey of Meg trying to find her father.  But by poorly developing these characters we don’t feel any emotional attachment nor do we have any emotional feeling at the end, which, if done correctly, would have been a juggernaut of feels.  What makes this even more frustrating, and makes me think Disney had more hands in this than usual, is that DuVernay is great at making character-driven movies.  Her movies aren’t about the actions that happen, but about the people in these actions and how they respond to the actions.  It feels the opposite here, as the movie really focuses on the actions rather than it’s characters.

I guess if there is a positive of the film, it’s the aesthetics.  The costumes and make-up are really fun, the universes are uniquely crafted and amazing to look at, and everything that happens in the world is bizarre, but kind of cool.  If only any of it mattered.

A Wrinkle in Time is an early frontrunner for most disappointing movie of 2018.  This is a movie that is not only disappointing, but bad.  From the confusing plot, to the tonal shifts, to the poor characters, nothing about this movie works.  Ava DuVernay is still an exciting, talented director, but she’s better than this.  Maybe the big budget blockbuster isn’t her for.  Maybe it was the material or the studio.  Either way, this is a let down on every level.

Did you see A Wrinkle in Time?  What did you think?  Comment below or hit me up on Twitter or Instagram, @kevflix, or on Facebook by searching Kevflix.