A Wrinkle in Time is a Waste of Time

A Wrinkle in Time (2018)

Well, I thought A Wrinkle in Time was very underwhelming. I never read the book, so I have no attachment to the story and can only assume that the book is better than the movie, because it would be pretty hard to be worse. Warning, this is going to be a longer review than usual. A Wrinkle in Time is one of the few movies that could use a few more minutes to flush out scenes and transitions. The moments in the movie were very disjointed and caused the film to lack flow. I don't know if Ava Duvernay was trying to make a point that time and space are largely random and uncontrollable, but it just made the movie worse. The visuals were great and the different worlds (besides the evil world) were spectacular, but fleeting. The planets that were used most, Earth and evil amorphous darkness place (with a ridiculous amount of light) were pretty bland and basic. The adult actors, besides Pine, were weak. Kaling delivered her lines like she was reading them. Witherspoon was fine, but her character was comedic, but not given the freedom to actually be funny. Oprah didn't act, she just played herself in weird makeup, which is a waste of her legitimate talent. And Galifianakis and Pena were basically throwaway characters. Surprisingly, the child actors were great, for the poor direction they were given. Their relationships and emotions were believable, but their growth was rushed or off camera. The main character was a nuisance for all except the last 15 minutes. She was looking for her father, who disappeared 4 years ago, and constantly resisted the first people who actually wanted to help find her father and showed her new worlds and abilities. But after being resistant and ignoring the advice of "The Warriors" for the entire movie, she becomes super powerful from love at the end and basically ends all evil. There were two things in the movie that especially bothered me. First, the evil that she faced is what causes all evil on Earth, so if somebody sucks, it is because there is an evil planet that makes people angry from light years away. I just found that stupid. Second, at the beginning, it made every educator at the protagonist's school look like incompetent assholes who don't know how to interact with kids or implement school policy. I'm sorry that this was one of my most incoherent reviews, but it follows the flow of the movie. I give A Wrinkle in Time 1 out of the 4 dimensions in a tesseract.

Also, Ava Duvernay tanking this movie makes me very nervous for after the announcement that she is directing DC's New Gods movie, which should be visually like Thor: Ragnarok with an Arthurian storyline. I don't know if I believe that she is up to the task anymore, which makes me very sad.