A Wrin­kle in Time

An old apho­rism states that the road to hell is paved with good inten­tions – the con­tem­po­rary trans­la­tion might sug­gest that the cin­e­mas in hell show only mediocre movies mas­querad­ing as some­thing more. Since it was announced in 2016, Ava DuVernay’s Dis­ney block­buster has been tout­ed as a ground­break­ing cin­e­mat­ic epic for the ages. With a (record-break­ing for a WOC direc­tor) bud­get of $100 mil­lion and an all-star cast includ­ing liv­ing leg­end Oprah Win­frey, the hopes of stu­dio execs and audi­ences around the world have been pinned to this ambi­tious project, adapt­ed from a beloved Amer­i­can YA nov­el of the same name.

With such mon­u­men­tal pres­sure on its shoul­ders, A Wrin­kle in Time was always going to be exam­ined with a fine-tooth comb by audi­ences the world over. There­in lies the prob­lem with this well-mean­ing but inher­ent­ly flawed film: peel back the glossy Dis­ney veneer, and there’s very lit­tle depth beneath the sur­face. Instead of being an epic fan­ta­sy adven­ture with a heart of gold, it’s a strange­ly ham­my sea of clich­es, strung togeth­er by a con­vo­lut­ed sci­en­tif­ic plot that even Neil DeGrasse Tyson would strug­gle to make sense of.

Its cen­tral sto­ry­line con­cerns Meg Mur­ray (Storm Reid), the young daugh­ter of two NASA sci­en­tists (played by Gugu Mbat­ha-Raw and Chris Pine) who trav­els to a mys­te­ri­ous plan­et in search of her miss­ing father. She’s accom­pa­nied by her pre­co­cious six-year-old adop­tive broth­er Charles Wal­lace, her friend/​crush Calvin, and three cos­mic enti­ties known as Mrs What­sit (Reese With­er­spoon), Mrs Who (Mindy Kaling) and Mrs. Which (Oprah Win­frey). Ah, and – because search­ing for her miss­ing father isn’t enough of a sto­ry – Meg must bat­tle an all-con­sum­ing evil enti­ty known as ​‘The It’ along the way.

None of this is ground­break­ing, which could per­haps be for­giv­en if the film man­aged to do some­thing more remark­able with its psy­che­del­ic set­ting. Aside from a bizarre non-sequitur where Reese With­er­spoon trans­forms into a giant fly­ing let­tuce leaf, all the action might as well be tak­ing place square­ly on plan­et Earth. Cheesy CGI set-pieces sequences are set to the thump­ing quote-unquote inspi­ra­tional sound­track, with an inces­sant raft of songs about being a war­rior real­ly ham­mer­ing home the mes­sage about empowerment.

While Oprah Win­frey plays Oprah Win­frey and Chris Pine spends all his screen­time sob­bing loud­ly, the sole light with­in A Wrin­kle in Time is Storm Reid, who piv­ots between anger and sad­ness and encap­su­lates every­thing it is to be a 13-year-old girl deal­ing with deep emo­tion­al trau­ma. But the film is too keen to tie every­thing up neat­ly, sug­gest­ing that four years of parental aban­don­ment can be changed in an instant, or that stand­ing up to an abu­sive par­ent will sud­den­ly change their behav­iour. Its cen­tral mantra is a trite ​‘Believe in your­self!’ deliv­ered in such a twee voice you can prac­ti­cal­ly taste the glit­ter being rammed down your throat.

There’s no fault­ing DuVernay’s ambi­tion and vision. She con­tin­ues to be a film­mak­er to watch, and this film’s fail­ure does not rest sole­ly on her shoul­ders – there’s sim­ply no escap­ing its insipid gener­ic­ness. Too much of a stu­dio film to take risks with its plot or visu­als and fol­low­ing too many threads to make nar­ra­tive sense, it feels like a missed oppor­tu­ni­ty to cre­ate some­thing either total­ly off the wall, or with a mes­sage that real­ly res­onates. It’s not enough for a film to have been made with good inten­tions; it needs to deliv­er too.