A Wrinkle in Time: Film Review
I wanted to love A Wrinkle in Time because it is a Disney movie, and I generally love all their stuff, because it is directed by Ava DuVernay, and has an incredible cast, including Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon and Mindy Kaling, but I just came away feeling a bit meh. It was fine, I guess I liked it, but I didn’t connect with the story at all.
Storm Reid stars as Meg Murry, whose scientist father Alex (Chris Pine) has been missing for four years. One day, Meg, her brother Charles Wallace (Deric McCabe) and their new friend Calvin (Levi Miller) are visited by Mrs. Whatsit (Witherspoon), Mrs. Who (Kaling) and Mrs. Which (Winfrey) who take them through a tesser, or a wrinkle, in space and time to find where her father is in the universe and bring him back home.
The plot is absolutely bonkers and I will amazed if any kid can follow it. I had read the book which helped a lot and I know my friends, who haven’t, did struggle because it is quite complex and so fantastical that it is hard to explain what is going on. There are so many new names, concepts and ever-changing landscapes to take in. Because of this, I just didn’t connect with the story – I just sat there watching it unmoved rather than being fully immersed in it.
That is a shame because the actors do a fantastic job with what they are given – particularly Reid, who does the emotional heavy-lifting and tries to ground the weird and wonderful story in some reality, McCabe, who is funny because he is so ridiculously smart and also convincingly sinister, and Pine and Gugu Mbatha-Raw as the parents. Winfrey, Witherspoon and Kaling are obviously the big names here and the ones doing the most press. They were perfectly cast in each of their respective roles but it was all quite shallow – they looked incredible but there wasn’t much else going on.
A Wrinkle in Time is a visual spectacle. Some of the landscapes were jaw-droppingly beautiful. The world-building was ace and I loved seeing these different realms unfold. I also have to give a shout-out to the hair, make-up and costume departments for making the three mystical travellers look so damn amazing.
I can appreciate what the movie will do for people of colour – having a young biracial girl in the lead is important and she was more than capable of carrying the movie. It was important to have an interracial couple as the parents in a big Disney movie and it not be ‘a thing’. I love what the film did in terms of representation, which is why I’m so disappointed that I wasn’t overwhelmed by it. I really wanted to, but I didn’t care for the story much at all. I cared about Meg and her dad and there were a couple of moments right at the end that I felt something but that was the first time during the whole damn thing.
In cinemas from Friday 23rd March