A Wrinkle in Time is, among others, a work that is rather ambitious and imaginative in its approach — a qualification that one appreciates at the present moment when there is also respect for bridge construction liberalism (to borrow the words from T’Challa in Black Panther).
It is also quite inelegantly, unrealistically, and mechanically edited; travelling up and down many places — rather like its characters — without much of a forward impetus. This is all a downside of L’Engle’s story which writer Jennifer Lee (who was amongst those behind Frozen and its sequel) works in detail with predicament at some juncture but brings in the articulate cop-outs in other sections.
How one feels about and accepts said flaws is most probably dependent on your generation. And there are certain sequences in A Wrinkle in Time that are whimsical and wondrous to the extent that you will find yourself as a little child imagining the first moment you realized how you could transcend time and space with the help of a motion picture to go on quests that you had only dreamt of. However, there are awful situations of dialogue that are forced out of the performers and action which literally make you wince so that the goodwill you had could dissipate as fast as it came.
It likewise showcases a mixed-race female lead in the story who is not constrained by the color of her skin since it is not the focal point of her story; she is allowed to be self-conscious, clumsy, and even mad like every other teen, while learning to appreciate her ‘flaws’ in order to become the hero of the story. In the case of A Wrinkle in Time, this proves the global relevance of L’Engle’s narrative while placing Meg’s quest at the intersection of an imagined and real-life tale, which is an unfortunate breech that has more often than not been clenched by white protagonists in animated children films with big budgets. (You have to go as far back as the early 2000’s Spy Kids to find another high concept, though extremely kiddie adventure film, with a less than $ 50 million budget that features kids of color in leading roles.)
Although the original source material featured a white family as the norm, DuVernay has stated that she sought to be very deliberate about the casting so that the audience would be able to see people of various ages, colors and body shapes. That isn’t just good for all audiences (especially girls and children of color) to witness, it also, depressing as it is, remains ground-breaking in today’s culture in terms of film making.
In certain aspects, A Wrinkle in Time goes to showcases the somewhat optimistic bias, which is lacking in L’Engle’s contemporaries, even L’Engle herself was writing about those themes over fifty years ago. It speaks against the dangers of assimilation as much as it cautions the society not being themselves even at the risk of being hurt and encourages people who seem to be too innocent to be sane in these times of too much evil, and the kind of encouragement that is rather cute at times (when it’s not making you tear up).
There’s no shortage of ‘feelings’ in any of the Disney films, but here it’s very clumsy even more so than usually, and while the annoyance towards the agenda with kids under 13 is completely understandable, the audience who is above that and does not require adult supervision may hope for the dialogue to have more cleverness. Even with all the glitz surrounding it, this doesn’t quite feel like one of those franchise launching aspirations that companies like Disney would wish for, but that does not mean that it is an empty trip — one that simply makes too many unnecessary stops before it gets to its destination.
The Verdict
But in spite of those problems when it comes to the narrative, A Wrinkle in Time does look the best when it tries to aim for the sky.
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