Review: A Wrinkle In Time

A Wrinkle In Time
Cert: PG / 109 mins / Dir. Ava DuVernay / Trailer



You'd perhaps hope, wouldn't you, that with a movie about temporal relativity, the attracted audience would be able to arrive at the time printed on their tickets*¹. Now obviously that designated time includes a buffer for ads and trailers, but people were still entering the auditorium to watch the 10:50 screening of A Wrinkle In Time at 11:40. That's 23 minutes into the film itself. Why? I sincerely hope that everyone who rocked up after the BBFC card had at least seen the film before, because it makes little enough sense to people watching the whole thing; I can only imagine how the story comes over with the first quarter trimmed off...

Ava Duvernay's take on Madeleine L'Engles 1962 novel has been hotly anticipated for both its classical literary standing and the contemporary social-tweaks applied for our current times. It's the story of introverted 13yr old Meg (Storm Reid), hunting in the time-between-times for her vanished astrophysicist father (Chris Pine), accompanied by her younger brother Charles Wallace (Deric McCabe) and friend Calvin (Levi Miller). On her quest she meets three the wise elders Mrs. Whatsit (Reese Witherspoon), Mrs. Who (Mindy Kaling) and Mrs. Which (Oprah Winfrey), who hold the key to unleashing Meg's full potential.

So as I was late to this party, I know I won't be the first to say A Wrinkle In Time is all over the place. From an effects-standpoint, it's everything you'd expect (but certainly nothing more). From a plot point-of-view, it feels unfocused*², and from a character-perspective everything's turned up to 11. Storm Reid gives a fairly solid performance in the lead role, hampered by a script which uses cliché and exposition as punctuation, a burden shared by almost everyone else she shares screen-time with. Mindy Kaling and Oprah Winfrew have studied at the Widow Twanky School Of Dramatic Performance for their parts, while Reese Witherspoon is having the time of her life over-acting with every single line and gesture she's been given. But on the plus side, I never thought I'd see the day where Chris Pine is the most naturalistic presence in a movie, and any director who can get that performance is okay in my book.

Don't get me wrong, there are some great moments in here, but there are far more that made me roll my eyes and wish that a film about scientists was less dismissive of science. As it rolls on, A Wrinkle In Time begins to feel more like a fable about philosophy which, ironically, someone hasn't thought about hard enough. In the first and third acts, the essence could only be more patronising if Ava DuVernay herself was manning the door, ready to hand out milk, cookies and pats on the head.

The main narrative problem could be that while we get plenty of faces on-screen, the villain of the piece is conceptual-evil. Love™ may be universal and occur instinctively within nature, but Actual Evil™ is subjective, so requires sentience and an assertion of malign-will. So there's nobody here for the heroes to actually defeat in a real sense, just a bunch of metaphorical lessons to be learned*³. Oh, and there's also that bit where Space-Winfrey tells our trio how vitally important it is that they stick together on their quest, then the film's finale essentially forgets that Calvin*⁴ is a character in the story, but they succeed anyway. Proving Space-Winfrey wrong. Way to go.

But y'know what? This isn't aimed at me. Which is fine. DuVernay's heart is in the right place (just about*⁵), and I've certainly seen less sincere fare aimed at youngsters. I can see what A Wrinkle In Time is aiming at. I mean, I think it flails wildly and misses, but at least it knew there was a target to begin with, and with Hotel Transylvania 3 on the horizon I think it's important we keep that in mind. Ultimately, I suspect the film is about Just Being Yourself™. I can't see any other reason that the makeup department would have waited until Space-Winfrey's grand, closing monologue before leaving her moustache clearly visible.

Inspirational literature or otherwise, A Wrinkle In Time is Interstellar, forced through the Disney meat grinder and served up as a happy-meal.
Exercise caution as appropriate...

Well my instinct would be to say Tomorrowland or John Carter but truth be told, I enjoyed each of those more than A Wrinkle In Time.



Probably not.



This will be a decent rainy-afternoon DVD.



No.



No.



No.



Level 1: The voice of Agent Kallus is in this.





*¹ Today's audience consisted of lots of parents accompanying young girls, so the marketing push has partially succeeded, at least. The father directly in front of me also fell into this bracket, and spent the ads and trailers reading articles on his phone about petrol prices. Textbook. Although bear in mind that this was the film's third week of release, and by the second it had already been relegated to one screening a day before 11am. That's the same marketing-push limiting its own audience numbers, right there. ^{[ BACK ]}

*² There's a thread laid out in act one where a NASA astronaut has gone missing 36 years to-the-day when Meg's father does likewise, and our story begins four years after that.The synchronicity is dropped in a way which indicates the NASA dude is a pretty important plot-mechanic. Then he's never mentioned again. So well done for that, I guess? ^{[ BACK ]}

*³ One of which is that an actual physical human man has been metaphysically imprisoned for four years by a concept, after thinking about stuff too hard - so what kind of message is that sending out? ^{[ BACK ]}

*⁴ And while I'm on, almost every time I saw Levi Miller here, I thought of a young Harrison Ford, either as Solo or Indy. Come on Lucasfilm, he's already on Disney's books, let's make this happen. And while I'm sure Alden Ehrenreich is going to be great as everyone's favourite Corellian pirate, maybe get Anthony Ingruber on the blower for the archaeology flick, yeah? ^{[ BACK ]}

*⁵ Mind you, Storm Reid is credited fourth in the closing montage, after Winfrey, Witherspoon and Kaling. That's not appearance-order, or alphabetical, it's just seems to be putting the kid further down the list, and after the annoying space-fairies. The hell? This is entirely Reid's film - and what kind of message is that sending out? ^{[ BACK ]}


DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Review: The Butler

The Butler
Cert: 12A / 132 mins / Dir. Lee Daniels



There's a feeling running throughout Lee Daniels™'s The Butler that you've missed some of the hype somewhere, and this is A Terribly Important Film which you've gone to watch just because you quite fancied it, and the rest of the audience might be sitting stroking their chins in solemn appreciation but you're too scared to pop your head up and look round at them because you're just thinking that it's quite good. There are some beautifully acted, written and directed scenes which even the most hard-hearted cinemagoer will struggle to be unmoved by, but they're part of a loose, fairly rambling narrative in which the titular servant is more of an observer than a protagonist.

In many ways, a more accurate title would have been The Butler Who Rolls His Eyes At The Horrible World Around Him While He Just Tries To Do His Best For His Family. Watched with that title in mind, it's entirely charming, and Forest Whitaker has been excellently cast a well-meaning yet principled everyman, in a world of constant fluctuation. The 'strong' performances come from those around him, with David Oyelowo, Cuba Gooding Jr, Colman Domingo and even Oprah Winfrey*¹ all getting a seemingly bigger bite of the acting pie. Whitaker's restrained grace, entirely in keeping with his diplomatic character, is the key, of course, but quite often it seems as though the butler is only acting as a conduit through which we see a greatest-hits reel of the civil rights movement over the last sixty years. By no means a bad thing, but by no means an original one, either.

The massive ensemble-cast also does the film no great favours, as the star-spotting game almost threatens to derail the sincerity of the events we're watching*². Some of the presidential roles work well, some don't, but none of them really have to time to bed in, due to the timespan of the film and the relative brevity of being The Most Important Man In The World. Although, in the sections where the writers didn't want to cast a president, we get actual archive footage instead of prosthetic-heavy portrayals and (very well executed) recreations of historic speeches and broadcasts. Ultimately, I get the impression it would have been a better move to cast lesser known actors in these parts, although I'm sure that the kudos of the film drew the cast like moths to a flame. Lee Daniels™'s The Butler will be on many a CV for years to come.

It's absolute Oscar-bait, of course, and I don't doubt the conviction of anyone involved, but Lee Daniels™'s The Butler never quite builds the cinematic gravity it'll need to be remembered in the long term. I also fear that there's a broad political stereotyping at play with the presidents we do see, but I don't have the background in US politics to go any further into that (then again, if I can see it without the background, maybe it's worse than I'm imagining). I'm not sure that a film as left-leaning*³ as this is going to be as universally loved as the makers would like. It's certainly preaching to the choir…

But really, Lee Daniels™? We've got Cyclops as Mr President; he gets "assassinated" and his job is taken over by Sabertooth?
And you expect me to believe there's no conspiracy there..?

"We're the future, Charles, not them…" ~ Erik Lehnsherr

It's deeper than the trailer suggests, but not too much deeper.



Largely.



I think it does, but maybe not to the extent that Lee Daniels™ would like it to.



It's a DVD movie.



No.



If it's on, but I probably won't go out of my way for it.



There isn't.

Am I the only one thinking it's *slightly* egotistical of director Lee Daniels to have his name included in the title of the film (IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes, Box Office Mojo) when he didn't write the screenplay or, presumably, orchestrate the true events in the film?
No?
It's just me, then.
Okay.

*¹ Oprah who, incidentally, doesn't seem to age at all for about 30 years in-story before finally going full Back To The Future II in the 2008 segment. Truly bizarre given that the make-up department went to great lengths to adapt the visage of all the other cast members. At one point I was starting to think that her character might be a vampire…
*² "Oh, Mr Rickman, that's great, you look the very image of dear old Ronnie. Now, can you read the lines in anything other than Alan Rickman's Voice™? Oh…"
*³ That's not a criticism, by the way. I'm very left-leaning myself, but I don't get the impression that it's a viewpoint which is going to sway The Academy at all...

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.