A Wrinkle in Time

I can’t remember the first time I saw The Neverending Story, but I certainly remember the massive number of times I rented the VHS from the library.  It was one of my mainstays, along with things like The Grinch Grinches the Cat in the Hat and The Goonies.  Having never read the book upon which it was based (it’s on the list, though), I’ve never been able to compare the two first-hand, but I have been told quite a bit has been cut out.  Regardless, the film’s pretty solid, with an interesting conceit and some entertainingly dark scenes.  I’ve recently gone back to watch it again, see if I’d still be as enamored with it, and, for the most part, it holds up.  There is a twinge, though, of disappointment, minor though it may be, revolving around a lack of foundational emotional heft.  I may not still enjoy it as much as I did back in the day, but I’d quickly recommend it to others, especially the younger folk (lookin’ at you, my several quasi-nieces and nephews).

A Wrinkle in Time follows something of a similar path.

The film follows young Meg, a girl whose scientist father disappeared without a trace a few years ago.  She’s not taken it well, feeling unjustly abandoned and whatnot.  She’s getting bullied at school – for some reason – and finds it difficult to apply herself the way she used to.  Suddenly, her adopted brother lets into the house a strange woman, who eventually whisks the siblings (and a third child, a boy interested in Meg) across the galaxy on a search for Meg’s father.

Over the course of her journey, Meg ostensibly learns to work through her negative thoughts and emotions and embrace the light within herself.  Without the bonds of doubt and whatnot, she’s able to harness her inner strength and power and do what it takes to battle the evil darkness of the universe.  She learns the power of love, both for the world and herself.  It’s pretty uplifting.

At least, I think that’s what I’m supposed to get out of this thing, anyway.  So, yeah, the film goes to great lengths to manifest Meg’s inner darkness for herself to see and battle, including personifying (maybe not the best word in this case…) the evil “The It” (I hate that name, it’s so bland) as her own seemingly dark mind, blazing neurons and all.  Thing is, the ostensibly positive theme is undercut by the presentation and methodology of the film itself.  See, there’s no talk about underlying problems or causes of dark thoughts (sadness/depression, anxiety, hate, usw.), just that such thoughts and feelings are bad and need to be overcome.  The same fear-love axis from Donnie Darko comes into play here, as though those are the only things in the universe (and they’re clearly easily defined, right?), and the whole argument comes across as a cheery person looking at a depressed person and saying, “Hey, I see you’re feeling bad.  Stop it.  Get over it.  You’re harshing my buzz.”  Seriously, Meg’s issues are treated as mostly externalized problems for other people, and she’d be able to smile again if she just shook off that pesky hate and embraced the warmth of love.  Just like that.  Don’t actually go into the roots of the problem, just physically turn your smile upside-down, Mr. Grumpy Gills.  I admit, a consistently positive mode of thinking can indeed be helpful, but such an outlook may be either impossible at the outset or difficult to maintain, as the true foundational elements of the “negative” feelings remain.  Moreover, that whole “there are no ‘good’ or ‘bad’ emotions” thing that powered Inside Out is absent here, as there’s a clear dichotomy in place.  It’s just so misguided and potentially harmful that I’m surprised there hasn’t been more outrage.

Okay, I’m not all that surprised, really, considering the presentation of the film is so botched that the message is not just garbled anyway, it’s hard to focus on.  Most glaring is the atrocious acting of young Deric McCabe, who plays Meg’s younger brother.  It wouldn’t be so bad, just another annoying kid (I remember how much I wanted to snuff out the kids from The Babadook and Room), but they gave him such a large part, such an expansive and demanding part, that it’s impossible to ignore the youngster’s obvious shortcomings.  He can’t emote well, he has a hard time with the admittedly awful script (we’ll get there soon enough), and his intonations are all way off.  The co-stars aren’t much better, though, with Oscar-winner Reese Witherspoon going full flighty, Oscar-nominee Oprah Winfrey completely phones in much of her performance (especially the parts where she’s clearly filmed elsewhere), and young Levi Miller goes for an overly-intense and -sensitive take on Shawn Ashmore.  Chris Pine, Storm Reid, and Gugu Mbatha-Raw do well enough, the first two actually pulling off a touching scene near the end, but they’re consistently let down by the absolutely horrendous script, which kept the tone and its own quality in such a state of flux that little registers in the audience’s minds (the other three ladies in my theater actually laughed at a scene that was ostensibly meant to be touching and/or sad, and it wasn’t exactly a unique happening).

Writer Jennifer Lee’s got some solid resume fodder, including Wreck-It Ralph, Zootopia, and Frozen, and it’s possible she was weighed down a bit by screenwriting partner Jeff Stockwell, whose previous efforts include Bridge to Terabithia (a similarly mishandled literary adaptation) and The Ottoman Lieutenant, but whatever the cause, these two put together a mess of a script.  The dialogue is preposterously stunted and awkward, and the characterizations are all broad and annoying.  Such dementedly overused nuggets as “Do you trust me?” are bandied about here, sprinkled amongst the constant outpouring of trite aphorisms.  The bullying is stiff, pointless, and as television-fake as I’ve ever seen, with the mean girl clique glibly standing in a straight row around Meg’s locker as she’s razzed for whatever reason (it’s never made clear, they’re just jerks (who, deep down, just wanna be loved, don’tcha know, gag me)); and it’s so pervasive that Meg, a purported genius, is left wondering if the initial appearance of the fantastical women was some sort of devious machination of the young girls (“Did Veronica put you up to this?”  Really?).  And there’s a distinct lack of full imagination on display, only some vague flights of fancy that are never allowed to blossom into something truly inspired or inspiring.

The visual effects follow this trend, the expensive effects leaving me wondering where the money went:  The small bits of wire work are stiff and unbelievable, and the CGI is way too obviously fake, everything lacking any weight or presence, thus reducing the inherent whimsy and completely undercutting any tension in every scene.  Oscar-nominated editor Spencer Averick disappoints here as well, giving the film a choppy, stuttering feel, the flow feeling like a river afflicted with several sudden cataracts and an abundance of route-defying rock formations.  Moreover, his shot matching is way off at several points, most glaringly in the scenes with Oprah being composited into the shot and woodenly attempting to interact with the other characters.  This aspect of things is all the more draining, as the camera work is pretty moody, the ever-moving camera creating an overall surreal vibe a la Terry Gilliam, and these shots are so artlessly thrown together that what we get is less dreamlike and more vertigo-afflicted.  The backgrounds are well-done, though, always looking somewhat interesting or lovely, but there’s no sense of full immersion being created, thanks to the use of bland pop music instead of an evocative score.

The worst aspect, though, is the ending.  Not gonna spoil the specifics here, but things build up to what seems like an obvious and potentially satisfying emotional conclusion.  Then things go sideways, and what they wind up doing with the characters completely undercuts what I thought the message was trying to be.  I guess this turn of events could be in support of the otherwise barely-present Christian vein the novel so strongly pushed, with a slightly hazy Christ analog sorta/kinda coming along, but this savior is less Aslan and more vaguely happiness-inducing insert-hero-name-here who does nothing but exist.  All that talk of the light being within Meg, and, lo and behold, not really, ’cause whatever consequences could have been illustrated, whatever actual weight and heft could have been included is tossed right out the window in favor of saccharine tripe.

I can really only describe this movie in terms of other films.  It’s like a less-imaginative What Dreams May Come, especially with its firmly grounded feel.  It has the twisty dream-like quality of Little Nemo and a similar presentation to that of The Neverending Story.  It’s basically The Phantom Tollbooth, just without the maths and grammar and a heaping helping of New Age-y metaphysical garbage couched in a mixture of scientific technobabble and overly-confident pseudoscience (think Spirit Science and the like).  It reminds me of all of those films, but it makes me want to watch them instead.

This film is likely something I’d’ve been really into back in the day, something I could see watching over and over again.  But the more thought is put into it, the more you notice about it, the less appealing, the more head-shakingly inept it starts to feel.  It’s allegedly rather different from the book, but it’s been so long since it was read to me in elementary school that I can’t fully aver anything on that front.  What I can say is that if the trailers really, really drew you in, you’ll probably wind up generally enjoying the film, even accounting for some drop-off.  Otherwise, you’re better off just steering clear, maybe trying out any of the aforementioned films, their respective warts and all.  This is just a muddled, rushed, underwhelming mess of a film that plain doesn’t work and occasionally winds up condescending to its audience.  Hopefully the creative team can come back from this and wow us again, but this is gonna remain a dark spot on their records for some time.