A Wrinkle in Time

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Meg Murry (played by Storm Reid) is a shy, troubled middle-school student whose father, a renowned scientist (played by Chris Pine) disappeared when she was very young. Meg, her friend Calvin (played by Levi Miller), and her adopted brother Charles Wallace (played by Deric McCabe) are transported to a fantasy world in an effort to search for the man. Some of the performances are good. Storm Reid and Chris Pine are easily the standouts for me. On the flip-side, young Deric McCabe is awful in this film. It's clear that the boy needs some more acting lessons. Oprah Winfrey as Mrs. Which feels like she just doesn't want to be in the movie. She doesn't put any emotion into her role at all. Mindy Kaling is utterly miscast as Mrs. Who. The character doesn't do a whole lot outside of say famous quotes. Think about the roles that work for Mindy Kaling. She's better when she gets to play dry and sarcastic. I will admit that the visuals are nice to look at, even if it is clear that they look fake. I can just easily say that they don't really stand out that much. I could just as easily see this kind of fantasy world looking right at home in Oz: The Great and Powerful. I appreciate the attempts at character development, even if some it is given to characters that don't really have much affect on the story. The scene where this development starts coming into play is easily the best scene in the movie, especially when it comes to fleshing out the Calvin character a little bit more. We're given a quick hint about his relationship with his father early on, but the moment we're actually shown that his father is controlling and verbally and emotionally abusive is actually impactful. We're given some background to the movie's token bully character. The problem I have with this is that she's not in the movie enough for me to care. I do like the performance by Zach Galifianakis in this scene, even if it is just a glorified cameo. Ava DuVerney is a talented director. The issue is she doesn't really offer any flare of her own into this movie. This could just as easily have been directed by Brad Bird, J.J. Abrams, or even Steven Spielberg. Sometimes, the biggest issue with the direction of a movie is when you can easily say that anybody could make this movie. The tone is all over the place. It feels like the movie can go from whimsical to legitimately creepy in a millisecond. You could argue that it's done in an attempt to emulate children's movies of the 1980s. The thing is, that sort of thing works because it needs to be a legitimately off-setting moment, and I never really feel that in this movie. But, this movie's biggest flaw is its writing. Pine's character vanishes near the beginning of the film. We're not actually shown this moment until about the halfway mark. When we first learn about his disappearance, we're told through clunky exposition, and it's repeated multiple times. Of course, there's a lot of stuff that never really feels explained.There are things that happen in the movie, but we're never given reasons as to how or why they are happening. The interjections of humor never work. They all fall flat. A Wrinkle in Time really had the potential to be a good movie. In the end, the parts don't really add up to the overall whole. This is a movie I would easily recommend skipping.

3 / 10