A Short Review Of A Wrinkle In Time

I saw A Wrinkle In Time last night and I really, really wanted to like it. When the first previews began to run with that amazing cover of "Sweet Dreams," I just knew I wanted to see the movie. And, it starred Oprah, Reese Witherspoon & Mindy Kaling, was directed by acclaimed African American director Ava DuVernay and featured a story about girl empowerment. All of these were checkboxes for me.

But, if I'm honest, I just didn't.

I struggled to find any way that I could emotionally connect to the movie, but there was just nothing.

Now, I am embarrassed to say that I could not remember what the book was about. I remember loving it and reading it several times as a kid, but I just couldn't remember it. And, having watched the movie, there still was no memories jogged.

That said, and I might be totally wrong, I feel maybe the movie followed the book a little too close and tried to be too faithful to the source material. I felt the movie should have had a strong sense of magic and wonder. And, sure, they showed three strong magical women guiding the children through worlds of wonder. But, there was some missing ingredient. I felt a lot of it ended up being about the folding of time and space and tesseracts. I get that there is a strong science element to this, but at the expense of the fantasy.

The beginning of the movie lumbered without really giving me an emotional connection to Meg's journey. Yes, they told me that Meg's father disappeared and that she loved him very much. And, yes, they told me that she was bullied as a result of her isolating herself. But, I didn't feel it. I didn't feel for her. And that made me sad.

The appearance of the three women should have felt amazing. Like there was finally hope for Meg. But, I was left wondering who they were. And, I felt that Meg's character was a little too shrouded in self doubt that it almost felt like she was along for the ride.

Once they "tesser" through the universe, it then feels almost too fast paced. One moment, they are riding a giant fairy leaf and the next moment they're being tempted to eat sand on a beach by an evil force.

And, by the time she uses her faults as her gift, her turn to be a warrior felt too sudden to me.

All the content was there, it just felt conceptual rather than emotional.

I do want to see the movie again because I, sometimes, have to digest the story. Like I said, it was a lot of concept and that's often hard to understand in a first sitting. Plus, regardless of how I felt about the movie, I want to be able to support directors of color. I think people should go see it and not be marred by the reviews out there. There are many people who liked the movie, even if I didn't happen to be one of them.

It makes me sad that some people chose to pit the success of Black Panther against A Wrinkle In Time rather than celebrating the fact that the two movies at the top of the box office this weekend were big budget movies directed by people of color. That, in and of itself, is an amazing thing.