Is Ava DuVernay's 'A Wrinkle In Time' Any Good? Here's What The Reviews Are Saying
Adapted from Madeleine L'Engle's groundbreaking young adult novel, "Selma" director Ava DuVernay's Disney blockbuster version of "A Wrinkle In Time" (opening Friday, March 9th) is the first film with a budget over $100 million to be directed by a woman of color. Does it fall into familiar blockbuster traps or present something new? Is it destined to be the kid-version of "Annihilation" — another "unfilmable" sci-fi novel whose film adaptation floundered at the box office? Here's what the reviews say:
Plot-Wise, It's A Modernized Take On L'Engle's Novel
The film takes its cues from the book of the same name by Madeleine L'Engle, with a few modern updates. Troubled teenager Meg Murry (Storm Reid) has never gotten over the disappearance of her physicist father Alex (Chris Pine) four years earlier. He believed human beings could traverse infinitely vast distances using only their minds. (Google "quantum entanglements" if you want to know more.) Alex's colleagues laughed at his theories, and then he vanished without a trace.
Meg, Charles Wallace and Calvin are recruited by a trio of strange feminine figures and sent careening on a conceptual adventure against the forces of universal darkness — and also they're trying to find Meg and Charles Wallace's missing father.
[Polygon]
Storm Reid Is Terrific As Meg Murry
Meg is a terrific character, and Reid does an admirable job of playing the opposite of the "Chosen One" figure. In family movies, and especially adventure stories, you tend to get a bit of a Mary Sue/Billy Lou character who's good at everything and is the hero for a reason outside a minor flaw or two. But Meg is deeply flawed, filled with anger and resentment over the bullying she's encountered after the loss of her father. There's nothing "special" about her, which makes her a far more compelling protagonist because she has to work harder to grow as a person.
[Collider]
"Wrinkle"s heart and soul are Reid and Pine. It's their rapport — and their characters' sometimes uneasy relationship — that speaks to everything that Wrinkle wants to articulate about losing someone close to us and realising what our priorities should be. Playing the ambitious, distracted Alex — eyes up to the stars but losing sight of his own daughter — Pine continues to grow into a deeply empathetic, supple actor. Meanwhile Reid, as the self-conscious but compassionate Meg, already demonstrates an emotional facility that suggests this teenage actress is poised beyond her years.
Oprah Is Basically Playing 'Space Oprah,' Which Works If You're Open To It
Mrs. Whatsit — one of the celestial beings — is played by Oprah Winfrey and basically is Oprah Winfrey, a wise and uplifting presence.
[Mashable]
I know I'm a bad American for being generally annoyed with [Oprah's] patented brand of you-can-do-it sermonizing, but when Mrs. Which offers support and inspiration to a wavering Meg, I got a lump in my throat. It's not just any actress who can be taken seriously after her character enters as a 30-foot colossus, but Winfrey gives the movie — and its heroine — the juice to keep going.
[The Wrap]
A Lot Of Critics Think It's Messy, Especially CGI-Wise
For every moment of colorful imagination, you have a CGI overload that makes the characters feel untethered from their surroundings. For every honest bit of character development, you have stilted dialogue that falls flat. Instead of leaping through adventure, the film frequently feels like it's stumbling from scene to scene.
[Collider]
As is often the weakness with modern blockbusters, "Wrinkle" can be overwhelmed by its wall-to-wall CG fakery — which probably explains why the movie's most impressive and stirring effects shots near the end are relatively low-key.
"Wrinkle" begins toggling between very familiar multiplex fodder and a sort of Fischer-Price's My First Acid Trip.
DuVernay's Vision For The Film Is Earnest In A Rare Way
The Marvel and Pixar franchises have masterfully wielded the tool those of us who were nerds in school dutifully weaponized: the well-placed one-liner as defense against social anxiety. "A Wrinkle in Time" is often funny. It contains a playful spirit that will endear it to parents and children alike, but it's not going to sacrifice pathos for a gag. It's like an earnest, forceful hug from an aunt or uncle that they refuse to let go of. It eventually stops being uncomfortable, because you come to realize they really, really mean it.
The real wrinkle in time is love, or the friends we made along the way, or something like that. This is a movie that wears its heart on its sleeve, so if you're not emotionally invested right away, you're in for a long couple of hours.
[Mashable]
Is "A Wrinkle In Time" a perfect film? No, it is not — but what the movie provides is a broad perspective through a series of whimsical events about light fighting darkness and love being the best weapon wielded against evil. It may not get there in a perfectly wrapped bow, but it tells the story in a way that as a fan I can appreciate — and as a critic, I can also respect. I smiled throughout this entire film because it gave me a sense of joy and, just for a few moments, I was able to escape and feel enamored by all of the beauty on screen.
Even If You Appreciate The Message, The Screenplay Gets It Across In A Rough Manner
You feel some hesitation in the storytelling here. The three Mrs. W's overexplain every wonder with PowerPoint precision. Anything they don't explain gets covered by Pine, trapped in a series of horrid flashbacks, including one where he delivers an actual PowerPoint lecture about the film's psycho-spiritual cosmology.
The screenplay by Jeff Stockwell and "Frozen"s Jennifer Lee, is largely comprised of a series of talky, disconnected set-pieces. The children arrive somewhere, the Mrs. W's explain what's going on, and they leave for the next CGI locale.
While Jennifer Lee and Jeff Stockwell's screenplay occasionally lacks sophistication — a failing that applies to some of the performances, too — that seems to be part of DuVernay's subversive strategy. Characters express their feelings with such unashamed openness that it's unexpectedly affecting, underlining the movie's message that we can't give in to hatred and that it's important to tell our loved ones how much they mean.
For All Its Flaws, 'A Wrinkle In Time' Has The Air Of An Undeniably Important Film
You're never sure whether you're watching a psychedelic, "difficult" science fiction movie hidden inside a Disney kids' movie or vice versa — and you're never sure if the movie's ambitious attempt to serve both of those masters is a feature or a bug. The result is indeed an eyeful, an earful, a handful, but one that's hard not to feel is dotted with collateral damage.
"A Wrinkle in Time" is set in our present, but has the uncontaminated sincerity of films from decades past. Its gleaming, multiracial cast and propensity for philosophizing lack even a trace of irony. In the wake of "Get Out" and "Black Panther," "A Wrinkle in Time" completes a trilogy of transcendent black filmmaking. "Get Out" examines the painful past. "Black Panther" shows what we are and can be. "A Wrinkle in Time" looks at what's next through the eyes of children with open hearts and curious minds.
It's worth seeing just to bask in a film that does ask for inclusion on such a grand scale, that does score points both subtle and not-so-subtle ("I've never seen the point of fences," notes Whatsit, and the subtext is understood), that does question why the province of tentpoles belongs to one group and not every group. What she brings to the party is invaluable. And what is on screen is a singular adaptation that stumbles more than you wish it would.
"A Wrinkle in Time" is the kind of movie that doesn't just capture the imaginations of children, but defines the way they look at the world. It's an experience that might give them nightmares or upset them with emotions too strong to go on with — as I remember beloved movies like "The Princess Bride," "Toy Story" or "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory" doing for me — but a movie whose feelings and frights quickly solidify into, for the children, a better mastery over their own fears.
[Polygon]
TL:DR
It's an expensive art film for children — and that's a good thing.
[The Wrap]
This "Wrinkle in Time" is undoubtedly flawed, wildly uneven and apt to tie itself in narrative knots in a quest to wow you with sheer Technicolor weirdness. It's also undeniably DuVernay's movie as much as Disney's, and works best when she puts her freak-flag feminine energy and sense of empathy front and center.
Watch The Trailer
