When it comes to movies based on books, my children have two very different strategies. My 12 year old son refuses to see a movie if he has not read the book on which it is based. My 10 year old daughter is just the opposite. MJ likes to use the movie as an inspiration to read the book. Therefore, this past weekend I took my 10 year old daughter MJ to see A Wrinkle in Time. My son stayed home. He chose wisely.
Because I read the book over 35 years ago, I honestly did not remember very much of the story. I had a vague recollection of thinking the book was "OK" but I don't remember loving it or ever wanting to read it again. Therefore, I am writing this review based 100% on what I saw in the theater. I cannot comment on whether or not it stayed true to the book... although I'm nearly positive it did not. I am just making an educated guess that a 100 minute long movie could not possibly include all of the details included in a 260 page novel (even if it is written at the 6th grade level).
For the first 30 minutes of the movie, I was very happy. The film was incredibly colorful and included beautiful music and imagery. It was a very simple story that any 10 year old could understand. A father disappeared. His incredibly smart daughter is struggling at a school where she is bullied on a daily basis. Even some of the teachers were incredibly disrespectful.
Although the type and amount of bullying was a little dark, I understood that I was watching a fairy-tale. Those stories are often filled with over-the-top depiction of evil villains. The fairy-tale feeling continued as the three main characters, a pre-teen, her brother, and for some reason a would be boyfriend, meet supernatural women "warriors" from other parts of the universe.
After the movie I asked my daughter what these three women were. She had no idea either.
The initial set-up was fun, visually appealing, and included some clever dialogue. My favorite part of the movie is the fact that Mrs Who, played incredibly well by Mindy Kaling, used famous quotes in order to communicate. This reminded me of Bumblebee from Transformers , but instead of vapid pop culture and music references, she spoke in very meaningful quotes from famous people throughout history.
The three children travel to another part of the universe in search of Dr. Murray, the two children's father who went missing four years earlier. The next twenty minutes continued to be rather mindless fun with the group meeting a seer portrayed by Zach Galifianakis.
After the scenes with the seer, the wheels completely fall off the entire movie. It seemed as if someone on the creative team noticed that the movie was heading towards being two and a half hours long. They realized that a movie aimed at 10 to 13 year olds could not possibly be that long so they decided to tie up everything as quickly as possible in the next forty minutes. As a result, absolutely nothing makes sense in those last forty minutes. Characters seem to appear and disappear at random. A very important battle takes place... but the audience has no idea why it is occurring or how it is won. An incredibly brilliant character seems to become a weak idiot without any explanation as to why. And then the movie ends.
I feel his pain. I had no clue what was going on during the last 40 minutes of this mess.
Although my daughter claims she enjoyed the movie, she also said that she does not think we need to buy the DVD... which means she really didn't like it.
If you have to take your child to see it, it is not utterly terrible. I did not want to fall asleep. The acting was good. Being the only person alive who liked The Cloverfield Paradox, I was happy to see its lead actress, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, get another role as the children's mother. Both Mindy Kaling and Reese Witherspoon were quite fun as fairy godmothers/witches/celestial beings... or whatever they were. The child actors were about on par with a Disney Channel TV show. Surprisingly, Oprah did not ruin the movie. I am not an Oprah "hater" but she simply is not an actress. She should be talking about movies, not "starring" in them. However, because the character was supposed to be so "spacey" it did not really matter that the actress portraying her could not act.
This was an especially nice movie to see alone with my daughter. Even though the movie was not great, there are some very simple messages about love and family that seemed to hit home with my daughter. It is also a "girl-power" movie. In my opinion, my daughter can never see enough images of powerful girls and women. I want that message hammered home every chance we get. Girls are smart, strong, caring and capable. I would sit through 100 terrible movies if they had any positive effect on my daughter.
Does this Gif confuse you? Do you think it might scare a little kid?
That sums up the last few minutes of this movie.
Unfortunately, there is a HUGE problem with this movie: its rating. There is no way this movie should have been rated PG. The final battle was so scary that we almost had to leave the theater. Although my daughter has powered through some pretty scary stuff in the Harry Potter movies, this battle seemed far scarier. It was dark, loud, dangerous and seemed to go on forever. The length was especially odd considering the creators were trying very hard to keep the movie as short as possible. I would definitely not recommend bringing small children to this. They will be bored for most of the movie and then scared at the end.
Although I did like the "girl-power" aspect of the movie, if I had it to do over again, I would have waited and rented this movie or watched it on Netflix. That way we could have fast forwarded through the scary and unexplained final battle. I could have also started playing on my computer after the first 40 minutes of the movie. I wouldn't have missed a thing.
Geeky Dad's Movie Guide
Number of times I fell asleep: 0
Number of eye rolls: 0 (I would have had to know what was actually going on in order to merit an eye roll)
Number of face palms: 0
Number of times my kid asked to go to the bathroom or get food out of sheer boredom: 0
Number of times I checked steemit: 0
Number of times I said "Huh?": The entire last 40 minutes.
Did my kids like it: A little
Would I see it without my kids: No way
Full price/Matinee/Rental/Free/Not worth the time: If your kids are dying to see it, wait for the cheap theaters. It should be there in a couple of weeks. Otherwise watch it with them for free.