In Defense of ‘A Wrinkle in Time’

It’s tough to crawl out from under the wreckage of a movie that disappoints. And while A Wrinkle in Time didn’t bomb as bad as some movies — 42% on Rotten Tomatoes and $100 million domestic is underwhelming but no flatline — it definitely disappointed. But half a year since its debut, I wonder if it isn’t well past time to sift past the wreckage of what didn’t work (deepest apologies in advance, Oprah) and focus on what Ava DuVernay’s high-profile fizzle did well. Specifically, create a young, black heroine to be proud of and building an emotional family core at the center of all those dazzling (distracting?) effects.

As lethal as bad press can be for a film, an excess of excitement can be just as lethal for a film. The advance excitement for Ava DuVernay’s adaptation of the classic young-adult novel A Wrinkle in Time could not have been more fever-pitched. Here was an acclaimed filmmaker getting the kind of big-studio blockbuster opportunity that far too few black directors ever get (much less black women directors), with the kind of female-fronted star power that made so many of us want to cheer. Reese Witherspoon! Oprah Winfrey! Mindy Kaling! Chris Pine, the most sensitive of Chrisses!

The cresting waves of excitement were made only higher by the visual dazzlement on hand in the trailers. This was a movie that was going for BIG spectacle, yet in a way that was still outside the macho blockbuster industrial complex. No big guns or energy blasters; the biggest firepower on display in those trailers were the costumes.

In all that excitement, few stopped to consider what a strange case for adaptation A Wrinkle in Time was. It’s a book – a title really – that’s incredibly familiar to us, mostly for being on every school reading list since middle school. Anecdotally, though, far fewer people were familiar with the content of the story than they were the title of the book. And it’s a real strange story! A lot of the popular dissatisfaction with A Wrinkle in Time boiled down to Why Is This Weird Thing Weird? Which isn’t to say that the criticisms were unfounded. The big, dreamlike sequences with Mrs. Which, Whatsit, and Who suffer from a kind of formless lack of momentum that really do grind the gears of the film. They also present one of the film’s most vexing problems: Oprah Winfrey is TOO well-cast for her role. Not only is she such a massive persona in American popular culture, but that persona is of a wise, helpful mother-goddess given to spouting maxims that feed the soul and inspire the spirit. Mrs. Which is the embodiment of all of those qualities, writ large (literally large), so you can see why DuVernay cast Winfrey, especially after Oprah was so effectively deployed in Selma. But it’s just way too on the nose here; every time Mrs. Which delivers a kernel of wisdom to Meg (Storm Reid), it feels like she and Iyanla Vanzant are going to start taking questions from the audience.

Similarly, any single performance from Reese Witherspoon, Mindy Kaling, and Zach Galifianakis would probably have worked alone, but together it all just feels like so much excitable nonsense in order to get Meg to the part of the story that has real consequences.

But here’s where we get to what’s good about the movie, and what DuVernay brings to this project. Meg and her parents and the whole Murry family is established so well and with such economy and care. Casting Chris Pine was a fantastic start; he’s an actor who is both bankable and capable of going deep. Pine and Mbatha-Raw establish some crazy-good chemistry in their short screen time together, and instantly, that is a family worth going to the ends of time-space for.

Similarly, if you love a sibling dynamic in film as much as I do, the fact that the stakes in this movie are at their highest when a sister and brother are being threatened. Here, DuVernay strips everything else about the story away, no A-list actresses, no deux ex machina, it’s just Meg and her brother, at the center of a maelstrom.This is why you get a director who’s proven herself with human-sized movies to anchor your blockbuster. And it’s why the relative disappointment of A Wrinkle in Time — critically and commercially — shouldn’t keep DuVernay from getting a second shot at the big time. Because whatever else doesn’t work about this movie, having a character who looks, thinks, and feels like Meg Murry is well worth building on.

A Wrinkle in Time is now available to stream on Netflix.

Where to stream A Wrinkle in Time