A Wrinkle in Time (2018) - Thank you Ava Duvernay and Giant Oprah
Lots of people have written reviews for Ava Duvernay's adaptation of Madaline L'Engle's book A Wrinkle in Time, and look, it hasn't been pretty. It's sitting on a Rotten Tomatoes 40%, and it's tangled up in grossness. Disregard any review that whinges about people who only like this movie for representation, or that the diversity in this movie is forced, because both of those things are every bit as a bogus as the make believe world that this movie takes place in. The people making those statements are often the same people who'll rush to say that a review should be about the movie and the movie alone, and it's rare that I'll agree with that, because meaning and intent are deeply entwined with what you watch.
It can't be overstated that A Wrinkle in Time is every bit a children's movie. There can be movies for children which play well for all ages, and while I do feel that this has some broader appeal, it is not a movie in which you will find subtlety. For adults and for barely-adults, which is how I have to class myself for my own sanity, this needs to be watched with a sense of humour. It needs to be watched with the acknowledgement that "hey, this is based on a book for kids". It is a movie for kids and it is not the best movie for kids. Movies can have both good and bad and come out in different places for different people.
I came into A Wrinkle in Time with no prior knowledge of the story, but this is what I understood of the movie: Our protagonist is named Meg and her father, a bearded and cardiganned scientist Chris Pine, has been missing for four years. She is in middle school and she is bullied and she doesn't like herself very much, because it's middle school, and soon enough her younger brother Charles Wallace introduces her and the bland object of her affections to some intergalactic wonder women with strange names who will take them through the galaxy and help her find her father. Simple, right?
Having no background with L'Engle's novel, I needed strong characters. Thankfully, the casting here was excellent. I cannot overstate the importance of representation - I'm not going to academically cite Bell Hooks but like...read Bell Hooks - and not only did Duvernay work her usual magic there, but also with things like casting Gugu Mbatha-Raw (of San Junipero) and the effervescent Storm Reid in the main role. The weaker parts definitely came from minor roles, like Levi Miller's Calvin who just looked perpetually confused, but I suspect it had to do with his character being strangely empty and hard to pin down. A lot of times my problems with characters and with the movie as a whole had to do with the clunkiness of dialogue, where it felt overly expository or inorganic as speech.
If you could laugh at the bits of high key bad dialogue - "Smells like food, like good roasted food!" - or strangely handled exposition (news bulletins announcing the fourth anniversary of a missing space scientist), there is a whole host of fun stuff to look at. There is a giant Oprah! There is a weird beach sequence! There is a field of sentient flowers! There's so much great makeup! There are so many women. It's wonderful. It's silly and frivolous and often ridiculous, but it's about finding self-confidence and accepting your flaws and embracing the absurd.
Objectively, this movie is well made, but it could be better. It could be better acted and it could be deeper and I believe that more could have been done with the Mrs characters (mostly the non Oprah ones). But it's also a movie about destroying all of the evil in the universe? And it shows really tender familial relationships? And for me, by far the worst part of it was its slight normalisation of dangerous behaviours. I'm surprised this has not been called out more, but I was deeply uncomfortable with Miller's character - who is shown receiving verbal abuse from his father - finishing their intergalactic journey saying "There are some things I need to say to my dad". I wanted to reach out to young kids watching it and tell them to like, be careful and maybe not confront potential abusers in their lives if it could put them at risk? Maybe I'm hypersensitive to that kind of thing, but that made me worried for the implications.
Other than that, I had a lot of fun with this ultra glittery feel-good romp for kids. It was nowhere near perfect, but I watch so much garbage that it's nice to indulge in something that is made to make people feel good.
Rating: 5.5/10 - Like the characters in this movie after the action concludes, I too look at the sky and think about Giant Oprah.
It can't be overstated that A Wrinkle in Time is every bit a children's movie. There can be movies for children which play well for all ages, and while I do feel that this has some broader appeal, it is not a movie in which you will find subtlety. For adults and for barely-adults, which is how I have to class myself for my own sanity, this needs to be watched with a sense of humour. It needs to be watched with the acknowledgement that "hey, this is based on a book for kids". It is a movie for kids and it is not the best movie for kids. Movies can have both good and bad and come out in different places for different people.
I came into A Wrinkle in Time with no prior knowledge of the story, but this is what I understood of the movie: Our protagonist is named Meg and her father, a bearded and cardiganned scientist Chris Pine, has been missing for four years. She is in middle school and she is bullied and she doesn't like herself very much, because it's middle school, and soon enough her younger brother Charles Wallace introduces her and the bland object of her affections to some intergalactic wonder women with strange names who will take them through the galaxy and help her find her father. Simple, right?
Having no background with L'Engle's novel, I needed strong characters. Thankfully, the casting here was excellent. I cannot overstate the importance of representation - I'm not going to academically cite Bell Hooks but like...read Bell Hooks - and not only did Duvernay work her usual magic there, but also with things like casting Gugu Mbatha-Raw (of San Junipero) and the effervescent Storm Reid in the main role. The weaker parts definitely came from minor roles, like Levi Miller's Calvin who just looked perpetually confused, but I suspect it had to do with his character being strangely empty and hard to pin down. A lot of times my problems with characters and with the movie as a whole had to do with the clunkiness of dialogue, where it felt overly expository or inorganic as speech.
If you could laugh at the bits of high key bad dialogue - "Smells like food, like good roasted food!" - or strangely handled exposition (news bulletins announcing the fourth anniversary of a missing space scientist), there is a whole host of fun stuff to look at. There is a giant Oprah! There is a weird beach sequence! There is a field of sentient flowers! There's so much great makeup! There are so many women. It's wonderful. It's silly and frivolous and often ridiculous, but it's about finding self-confidence and accepting your flaws and embracing the absurd.
Objectively, this movie is well made, but it could be better. It could be better acted and it could be deeper and I believe that more could have been done with the Mrs characters (mostly the non Oprah ones). But it's also a movie about destroying all of the evil in the universe? And it shows really tender familial relationships? And for me, by far the worst part of it was its slight normalisation of dangerous behaviours. I'm surprised this has not been called out more, but I was deeply uncomfortable with Miller's character - who is shown receiving verbal abuse from his father - finishing their intergalactic journey saying "There are some things I need to say to my dad". I wanted to reach out to young kids watching it and tell them to like, be careful and maybe not confront potential abusers in their lives if it could put them at risk? Maybe I'm hypersensitive to that kind of thing, but that made me worried for the implications.
Other than that, I had a lot of fun with this ultra glittery feel-good romp for kids. It was nowhere near perfect, but I watch so much garbage that it's nice to indulge in something that is made to make people feel good.
Rating: 5.5/10 - Like the characters in this movie after the action concludes, I too look at the sky and think about Giant Oprah.
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