It's Disney week again this week, and I always feel like it's a bit of break. We've had Race to Witch Mountain and The Million Dollar Duck before now, both pretty decent movies but this weeks choice is a little bit more controversial; debuting to very mixed reviews and having an uncharacteristically low score for a Disney movie on IMDB - made all the more interesting by the fact it's a fairly new production and not one from that dodgy period in the 80's... it's A Wrinkle in Time.
Meg, (Storm Reid) Daughter of Dr Alexander Murry (Chris Pine) - a NASA Scientist who believed it was possible to travel through space using a Tesseract (not a Marvel reference...) is still suffering from her aforementioned Father's disappearance when her adopted Brother, Charles Wallace (Deric McCabe) introduces her to Mrs Whatsit (Reese Witherspoon), Mrs Who (Mindy Kaling) and Mrs Which (Oprah Winfrey), three astral beings who picked up a distress call leading them to Meg. They offer to help Meg find her missing father together with the help of Charles Wallace and Megs friend, Calvin O'Keefe (Levi Miller) and the trio 'tesser' to a planet on the other side of the galaxy called Uriel. After exploring, they discover a group of flowers who tell Mrs Whatsit that Meg's Father was here, and points them in a direction towards some mountains. Mrs Whatsit transforms into a giant leaf with a head... and begins to fly the group there but a dark void opens up in the sky stopping them from travelling further. Mrs Which describes the dark void as Camazotz: home to a purely evil energy, and the team learn that Meg's father has travelled on from Uriel. Deciding to consult the help of a Seer, the team 'tesser' to Orion; home of the Happy Medium (Zach Galifianakis). There they learn that The It's darkness spreads across the universe implanting negative emotions in the feelings of others and that the 3 Mrs's are recruiting warriors to fight The It and destroy it's darkness forever and that Meg has the potential to be one of those warriors. They learn that Meg's father is on Camazotz and deciding that they need to return to Earth the Mrs's begin to 'tesser' but Meg's will to find her father overpowers them and they 'tesser' to Camazotz. The Mrs's are not able to stay for long and have to leave the trio to find Meg's father alone, but warn them to stick together and not be deceived by the evil on the planet. After escaping a storm that strikes immediately after the Mrs's depart, Charles Wallace briefly disappears but the 3 are reunited and meet up with Red (Michael Peña) after the planet becomes a beach. Red (The It) hypnotises Charles Wallace and he becomes infested with negativity telling Meg that her father abandoned her but Meg sees past the negativity and is able to walk beyond the illusion to find her father imprisoned within The It. Charles Wallace, now completely consumed by The It takes Meg, Calvin and Dr Murry to meet The It but Dr Murry resists and tries to 'tesser' himself and Meg away. However Meg's will 'tessers' her into the mind of The It which is now fully in control of Charles Wallace and after trying to break her down, Meg is able to beat it with the love for her adopted brother and The It retreats. The Mrs's then return to congratulate Meg and she is able to 'tesser' everybody back to Earth, her father included.
Everything about this film just felt really unoriginal, in fact throughout the entire thing I felt like I was watching a re-write of the plot to Sharkboy & Lavagirl. It follows the same basic structure - human is plucked from Earth to save the galaxy but is underconfident in their abilty to do so, overcomes that under confidence and pulls it off. The end. With another mostly unoriginal sub-plot - 'person searches for a missing relative' woven into the fabric underneath. It's a very tried, very tested formula and the reason for that, I guess, is because it works. But I feel like if you've seen one of these films you've seen them all, mostly, with not very many of them at all really deviating from the central plot development. And this movie was one of those: One that doesn't really deviate from the central plot development.
So Meg finds her dad, she saves the universe e.t.c e.t.c. like y'know, you expected anything else might happen, and that's sort of disappointing in a way, but this movie did at least bring something fresh to the table; it's central casting: Storm Reid as Meg, Deric McCabe as Charles Wallace and to much lesser degree, Michael Peña as Red / The It was at least a more representative, more diverse cast, and Disney acknowledging the need for a female character to be the heroine of the piece rather than it be a man is commendable and fresh. There are a 100 other films where the white male character saves the universe, so that was at least something new and interesting that it bought to the table.
However, above point notwithstanding, I struggled with Meg as a character. I don't think it was wholly down to Storm Reid's portrayal but I was unconvinced by her and I felt the film really struggled to flesh out her struggle with losing her father and how that affected her as a person, despite their best efforts, and I felt they really struggled to portray when Meg was emotionally conflicted. Maybe I'm being harsh, and maybe it's difficult but she just spends alot of the time staring down at the ground and it didn't really do much for me, as the viewer, to communicate the range of emotion that Meg was going through. Aside from that, when called upon to do some actual acting Storm Reid did a good job and when she was allowed to portray some emotion on finding her father at the end, it was totally convincing.
Some comments on the other characters too while I'm here; Deric McCabe as Charles Wallace was really great and I fully expect to see him in future films when he's a little bit more grown up absolutely killing it. Levi Miller is absolutely going to break hearts when he gets a bit older because that boys looks are just unbelievable. He was decent in this too, but under-utilized really, serving as nothing more than a supporting role to Meg's character and helping the viewer to understand her 'coming of age'. It was a bit odd seeing Oprah Winfrey acting in a movie... she was fine, but it just was a bit... odd to me! I guess I'm used to seeing her host talk shows... and despite her portrayal being just fine, I found the character of Mrs Who to just get really annoying, really quickly with her use of quotations as contributions, most of the time, instead of any actual dialogue of her own.
This film leans heavy on the CGI. Very, very heavily. And it was almost too good to the point of being hyper-realistic, with the film walking a very narrow tightrope at certain points between cartoony realism and actual realism. I don't feel like it really spoiled the immersion too much, as this was a film about travelling between distant planets after all, but I feel they could have maybe dialled back the saturation and the HDR effects at certain points and it would have muted things slightly.
Aside from that, the cinematography for the most part was fine, although they seemed to go with the whole unsteady camera work quite alot, I think to try and put you in the position of an observer rather than being a omnipresent viewer, something that Assassinaut go so right, but here; with it's super crisp visuals and over-abundance of CGI it was something that again could have been dialled back. The script and plot, although repetitive as aforementioned, was fine, and everybody acting-wise put enough effort into this film to be convincing in their roles, when the script allowed for it.
I feel like they were really trying to go for a box office smash with this but it was just that little bit overcooked and a little bit over produced. Regrettably I also felt it was really hampered by a repetitive and stale plot that felt like it had been re-hashed, given a fresh coat of paint and put out there again to try and dupe the cinema going public into thinking it was something it wasn't. I'm vaguely aware of it being based on a book, so I figure you are constrained by attempting to be faithful to the original material whilst at the same time exercising some creative freedom, but ultimately this movie wasn't anything you hadn't seen before not really doing anything you haven't seen before. Enjoyable enough, but it didn't inspire me, and it didn't really change my life. 3 out of 5.
