Thursday, March 15, 2018

Review of A WRINKLE IN TIME: Disney Disappointment

March 15, 2018





While the animated films by the Disney Company are generally critically-acclaimed, its live action output could be a hit-or-miss affairs. While there are beloved classics like "Mary Poppins" (1964) and "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" (1988), there had also been those which had not been received well, latest of which were "Tomorrowland" (2015) and "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales" (2017). It was with this caution that we went to watch this latest live-action offering, a feature film version of Madeleine L'Engle's 1962 science-fiction novel "A Wrinkle in Time."

Meg Murry was a disturbed 13-year old girl who found it hard to recover from the unexplained disappearance of her father Dr. Alex Murry while studying a method of teleporting through space. One day, Mrs. Whatsit, a gregarious redhead neighbor with outrageous gowns introduced Meg to the platitude-quoting Mrs. Who and the wise motherly Mrs. Which. The three mysterious ladies offer to take Meg, along with her younger brother Charles Wallace and her good friend Calvin, across the universe to rescue her father from the Darkness and bring him back home.

14-year old lead actress Storm Reid was not charismatic enough to make the character of Meg interesting enough or engaging for me. There was also no chemistry between Reid and 15-year old Levi Miller in the role of Calvin. 9-year old Filipino-American child actor Deric McCabe was cute, perky and earnest as Charles Wallace, but he did not look right to be Meg's younger brother, or a child of Chris Pine and Gugu Mbatha-Raw, so they snuck in a line saying he was adopted. I guess this is all for an inclusive representation of races in films, which was certainly very apparent in this film.

Oprah Winfrey fit the larger-than-life role of Mrs. Which like a glove, brimming with sincerity and wisdom, even with her over-the-top makeup and costume. Reese Witherspoon, on the other hand, did not look too comfortable in Mrs. Whatsit outlandish outfits. Mindy Kaling's role as Mrs. Who felt under-used and under-exposed. Zach Galifianakis was effortlessly funny in his role as The Happy Medium. Michael Pena was as loud as his multi-colored costume as bad guy mind-controlling bodyguard, Red, so named for the color of his eyes.

Even from its trailer, the most eye-catching aspect of this film was its special visual effects. However, even these spectacular visuals could not lift the whole film out of the boring style of storytelling by director Ava DuVernay. There was no sense of wonder to be had with the very artificial quality of computer-generated effects. Even if Meg was talking to field of floating flowers, or Mrs. Whatsit transformed herself into a flying lettuce leaf carpet, or all those supposedly glorious "tessering" sequences -- sadly, there was just no wow nor magic, even for the kids. 4/10. 


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