A Wrinkle in Time (2018)

            A Wrinkle in Time, based on the novel by Madeline L’Engle, tells the story of a young girl named Meg, who wants to know where her father has been these past four years, after disappearing suddenly. When three astral beings come in the form of the Misses, Meg must now travel the universe with her little brother and friend, Calvin, to find her father, and defeat the darkness approaching rapidly.

            Let me clarify, that I have not read the book the film is based on, so my judgements are purely as a movie. Even with that in mind, I was curious to see how Disney would attempt A Wrinkle in Time after a decade. Back in 2003, Disney had put out a made-for-television movie, but it sadly wasn’t as big with audiences; what resulted was Disney losing the rights, and only being able to retain them back after the sad passing of Madeline L’Engle in 2008. Disney was just so eager to spit on L’Engle’s grave, weren’t they?

            Now from what the trailers were showing, all I could think was “This looks mediocre,” and part of me was expecting it to turn out the same as John Carter or Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, where they try to create this lush and beautiful world that looks stunning, but doesn’t have anything else to back it up. However, unlike those two examples, A Wrinkle in Time doesn’t engulf you into its world or philosophy in anyway, nor do they even get you interested in this adventure. The film spends so much time on how it looks and what it’s trying to represent for its female audience, that it constantly forgets that it’s supposed to be telling a story.

The dialogue is painfully forced, as they say what’s happening on screen, what the characters’ motives are, and tell us what the message of this movie is so much, it actually made The Meteor Man look subtle. Hell, if I hadn’t known this was coming to theatres and I listened to this, I would have assumed it was another lame Disney Channel movie, like Descendants (it’s that bad). Don’t believe me? They make a Chris Tucker reference in the movie…I repeat: A WRINKLE IN TIME, a KIDS movie, based on a book from the SIXTIES, makes a Chris Tucker reference. And it was Mindy Khaling saying “Daaang!” as Reese Witherspoon strips and transforms into a Salad Falkore. I don’t necessarily put the blame entirely on Jennifer Lee, despite the fact that it’s her script, because I put most of the blame on Ava DuVernay; the way she directed the film, she doesn’t know where to put the focus on the visuals or have the characters’ dump exposition, every five minutes. And when you finally get to “not Pandora,” it’s such an empty space, even with some of the CG flowers and giant Oprah Winfrey they insert. The amount of CGI used in this film, even from something as simple as filming in a FIELD, looks painfully obvious, and even the blue screen effects are a heavy reminder of that, as some of it looks unfinished. It gets so distracting and completely takes me out of the experience. Same can be said for the rest of the worlds, where some of them looked like it was something out of Fant4stic. It’s so dull and it has plotholes everywhere.

The three misses barely do anything in this movie, and at the points when they actually try to do something, it ends up being completely pointless to the movie; they spend so much time on sequences that either take forever to get to or go nowhere, you could have easily cut most of their scenes and it’d be the same film. And Reese Witherspoon, Mindy Khaling, and Oprah Winfrey look so bored to be there, like their business was solely to get a paycheck from Disney. The friend boy, played by Levi Miller (Peter Pan from Pan), is there because…he needed work, I suppose. The little brother in this film is annoying, both in how he’s written and how he acts; I know we’ve seen the little child genius trope done so many times before, but this one categories itself into that special hatred that only spawns from the worst written comic reliefs in film. He had nothing worth interesting to bring up, the villain wants him for…something; when he’s taken over by the villain, it never gets satisfying, because he’s worse when he IS possessed. Like, shut up, you brat!

The only actors I liked are Chris Pine and Gugu Mbatha-Raw, who play the mother and father of the main girl. While their characters were never something I thought about much, the way they interact with each other and Storm Reid as Meg, you really get a feel for this family bond that they all share. Just wish the rest of the film was like that, especially considering these two are barely even in the movie.

Overall, A Wrinkle in Time is the worst film that Disney has put out in such a long time. I know some people want to argue that it’s a kids’ movie and I shouldn’t complain, because I’m not the target audience, but that’s what makes it worse. We aren’t talking about one studio that doesn’t do well with family entertainment, we’re talking about THE family friendly entertainment company, who made a movie that treats its audience like they’re children and plays it safe constantly. This film is everything bad that people typically associate with Disney in a less than two-hour movie, forcing down our throats this whole trope of love conquers all and always be brave, padded in with lackluster visuals, a downright bad narrative, and characters you come out hating by the end; it’s the worst film I’ve seen so far this year.

Rating: F