Reviews are coming in for the Ava DuVernay directed adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L’Engle’s Newberry Award-winning novel of the same name. Sadly the reviews of the film version are fairly consistent. Most everyone says the film is beautiful and the casting was interesting and thoughtful but that the story suffers under too much Hollywood CGI-fueled pyrotechnics. From Deadline Hollywood:
It’s tough capturing movie magic in a bottle despite a $100 million-plus budget and all these new CGI toys at the disposal of its director, who is working in this realm for the first time. Certainly DuVernay proves herself capable of putting all the pieces together, but in a movie full of cliché-ish homilies, the emotional beats aren’t as plentiful as they might have been.
Similar words, too, from Variety:
Keep your expectations in check, and you might be pleasantly surprised. Despite such bold choices as casting Oprah Winfrey as an all-wise celestial being and rejecting the antiquated assumption that the lead characters ought to be white, “A Wrinkle in Time” is wildly uneven, weirdly suspenseless, and tonally all over the place, relying on wall-to-wall music to supply the missing emotional connection and trowel over huge plot holes.
A Wrinkle in Time stars Storm Reid, Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon and Mindy Kaling and opens in North America Friday March 9th.
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