A Wrinkle in Time

A beloved novel gets absolutely slaughtered with A Wrinkle in Time, a sure contender for one of 2018’s worst movies, and an embarrassment for the great talents involved. Madeleine L’Engle’s 1962 novel was adapted by Disney once before with an also lousy TV movie back in 2003. The book has been bouncing around Hollywood for decades, with many attempts to bring it to the big screen being aborted. It’s a sad, sad thing that Disney finally took the plunge, dropped over $100 million and came up with this mess. Compounding the sadness is that it’s directed by Ava DuVernay, who made the excellent Martin Luther King, Jr., biopic Selma. While that film had a cohesive vision, excellent technical credits and powerhouse acting all around, her new film has none of these things. It’s total chaos on screen. Crackpot-yet-dreamy scientist Mr. Murry (Chris Pine) is obsessed with interstellar travel, and believes that wrinkles in time could be used to travel light years through space. It’s never really established what he wants to achieve through such travel, but his obsession eventually leads to his disappearance for four years. He apparently travels through the universe with no real way to get home, and no real sense of purpose. His kids, led by Storm Reid, try to find them with a trio of strange folks played by Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon and Mindy Kaling who look totally clueless. Having watched the film, I’m still not sure what happened or what was supposed to be happening, and it sure didn’t look like the money was spent well. It looks cheap and dull.