Film Review: "A Wrinkle in Time"

     

            Director Ava Duvernay is back, this time helming Disney’s live-action adaptation of Madeleine L’Engle’s book, A Wrinkle in Time.The famed director made history with this film when she became the first female African-American director to helm a live-action film with a budget of over $100 million and only the third female director overall to achieve that budget. The film boasts an impressive cast that includes Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, Mindy Kaling, Chris Pine and is led by Storm Reid.

The film starts off with a short scene in which a young Meg (Reid) is spending time with her dad, Dr. Alex Murry (Pine). The film then jumps ahead to the present day where the four-year anniversary of Dr. Murry’s mysterious disappearance approaches. The first act moves quickly and it hastily portrays Meg as an outkast struggling to understand why her father left her family. Her 6-year-old genius brother (Deric McCabe) doesn’t help matters, as he can be a lot to handle for those around him. Before long, Meg meets Mrs. Whatsit (Witherspoon), Mrs. Who (Kaling) and Mrs. Which (Winfrey) and they embark on a fantastical journey across the universe to search for Dr. Murry.

A Wrinkle in Time is undeniably gorgeous to look at. The colors are fun, vibrant and are essential to help make the various worlds that the characters visit feel real. It’s not just the colors, however. The designs of everything from the terrain of the worlds to the way the creatures look was flawlessly and beautifully executed. There are so many frames within this film that will take your breath away with how wonderfully made they are. When it comes to the film’s visuals, there are no complaints.

Unfortunately, great visuals alone don’t make a great film. A Wrinkle in Time suffers from many things, one being its runtime. The film is under two hours long which feels awfully short for a film that has so many complicated themes and ideas (i.e. traveling through time and space). As the film progresses, you can get a sense that there are things that aren’t there, but they should be. Too often, A Wrinkle in Time feels like a compilation of random moments loosely tied together by this goal of finding Dr. Murry. It felt as if they wanted to include as many elements from the book as possible to make fans happy, but in doing so, they denied themselves the opportunity to fully develop the things that really mattered. They go through all these worlds but only spend a few minutes in each and it all ends up looking like a highlight reel of what this film could have been.

It is frustrating to see such a talented cast have nothing to do. All of the performances were fine, and I truly believe that the actors did what they could with what they were given, but it’s a shame that what they were given wasn’t good enough. Take Meg’s mother (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), for example. She is supposed to be this brilliant scientist, and we get glimpses of that but not nearly enough. It could have been especially inspiring for young girls to see her really be a scientist, to see that they are also capable of achieving that, and yet we hardly see her do anything scientific. This is the case with most the characters. You get a crash course of what they are supposed to be, but you don’t ever get to know them.

Ava Duvernay deserves all the credit in the world for doing what she did with the material she was given. One can only hope that this doesn’t deter studios from giving her big films because her talent is undeniable. Unfortunately, for all of its good intentions, A Wrinkle in Time ultimately falls short of being a great film. Ava took on a project that appears to be incredibly difficult to properly bring to the big screen and ended up making a beautiful mess.

A Wrinkle in Time sits at a 50% for me. There is some good, but also plenty of bad.