Review of Visual Clusterf^ck FU - A Wrinkle in Time

Yes, this qualifies as a visual clusterf^ck, because there’s so much happening on screen in terms of colour and visuals that it is somewhat overwhelming. Unfortunately, this movie also qualifies as a writing and directing clusterf^ck, too.

An adaptation of Madeline l’Engle’s book of the same name, A Wrinkle in Time is about Meg, whose scientist father disappeared when she was quite young, leaving her, her mother and her adopted brother Charles Wallace (who hates being called Charlie, even though it would make the dialogue less clunky). One day, on the anniversary of her father’s disappearance, her brother meets Miss Whatsit, a bizarre woman who eventually leads Meg, Charles Wallace and some other kid (I’ve forgotten his name, character, shape etc.) on an inter-dimensional adventure.

Before I saw this movie, I had never read or heard of this book. I didn’t know of Brie Larson’s comments about how white men couldn’t review the movie (which as I’m demonstrating now was not an effective deterrent) and I knew nothing about what this movie was going to be about. All I knew was that it was directed by Ava DuVernay, the filmmaker behind the excellent 2014 Martin Luther King film Selma, and written by the director of Frozen. So I was legitimately tense as I went to the theatre with my posse in 2018, which consisted of my mother (the getaway driver), my friend Jack and Jack’s sister Evie, the film’s intended audience. When the film had wrapped up, me and Jack were shaking our heads at what we just saw, because we just couldn’t believe it.

This shot represents us looking confused at this movie while something like Infinity War was playing in the theatre next to us.

A Wrinkle in Time is indeed a visual clusterf^ck, but not in a way where a huge, new world has to built around you very quickly, like MirrorMask. Instead, it’s a clutter of art styles that don’t really gel together, with Avatar’s ridiculous CGI backgrounds mixing with the grounded set-based style of Wes Anderson. This movie feels quite overwhelming and confused visually, which is a shame given the number of beautiful environments they easily could have explored and gaped in wonder at. When it’s CGI, it’s bland and I can’t feel any real emotional connection. When there are sets, it’s at such a juxtaposition from the CGI that it’s jarring.

Tim Burton's cabbage fantasy, meet Wes Anderson's Space Odyssey. This is how you consistently style a movie.

The dialogue and writing in this movie are also just mind-blowingly bad for a movie that’s had decades to learn from films that screwed up in this area. At points, this movie is a serious sad drama, but everything else about the movie just feels like a jarring mix of Avatar and Lewis Carroll logic. As I said earlier, the characters have to refer to the main male kid as “Charles Wallace”, which sounds ridiculous when slipped into mainstream sentences in the same way that “old sport” sounded clunky in The Great Gatsby, only without commentary on societal expectation. There’s also a lot of dialogue where the characters refer to the concept of love as “the answer”, without any real sense of grounding or explanation to it, and the majority of dialogue from the three Miss characters is silly without any payoff. Add in a ton of clichés such as the bullied main kid, some confusing side characters that don’t have any logic in their actions, and also just no motivation for Levi Miller’s character to be in the film – like, he literally must have thought “these siblings are having a conversation that’s clearly meant to be private, so I’ll just walk in and answer the question she asked him, because I’m secretly an asshole”, and that’s all the motivation/characterization he gets – he’s just there. It’s atrocious.

The oddest part of this movie is probably its moral and message, which is about unconditional love even in the face of evil. It’s tacked on at the end, and even though “love” has been talked about in the film for quite a while beforehand, it’s never really been defined. So all of the talk has to come extremely condensed right at the end, Tomorrowland-style, and the audience is rushed off their feet and confused. And this is the same studio that made Tomorrowland, so they should have learned by now.

Exactly.

So one actor is probably the only redeemable part of this movie. Storm Reid as Meg is a talented young actress, I was genuinely invested in her storyline for a bit and I understood her anger and actions. She was the only actor I felt gave a good, investing performance.

One o'clock's a good actor. Two o'clock's very punchable. Four o'clock's inexplicable. Six o'clock is arbitrary star-power. Eight o'clock is fatally misused. Ten o'clock's a non-entity. Eleven o'clock's equally inexplicable, superfluous, misused, but not annoyingly punchable.

Everyone else has just one thing that keeps them from really being affecting. As I said earlier, Levi Miller just has no character whatsoever, his nature is just to be ever-present. Deric McCabe as Charles Wallace, while admittedly being 9 at the time of filming and developing his talents, comes off less as a curious child exploring this new world which he understands better than the old one, and more like that annoying kid who you just feel a strange desire to punch in the face. Reese Witherspoon is all like “magic and whimsy” and prancing, but there’s nothing more to the character. And Oprah Winfrey, Mindy Kaling, Michael Peña, Zach Galifianakis, David Oyewolo, Chris Pine and Gugu Mbatha-Raw aren’t really given anything to do beyond…say words, and be present, and cash paychecks (hell, Kaling isn’t even given original dialogue, she can only speak in other people’s quotes, including a Sex and the City reference).

In short, you can give your kids way better movies about fantasy and empowerment and love, such as Captain Marvel or MirrorMask or Moana or whatever the hell inspired you. This movie is really disappointing from a storytelling, acting and visual clusterf^ck perspective, and it should have been so much better.