A Wrinkle in Time

While Disney buys out property after property to create a collective dystopian monopoly over Hollywood, it's easy to forget their origins in live-action films. Most of their business was founded and funded under the adaptation of many classic novels and IPs in the 20th century, something that they've tried to keep up with in the 21st as well, with some absolute classics like Freaky Friday coming out in the early 2000s.

 However, it's not been such a strong endeavor, with films like Tron: Legacy disappointing at the box office and Tomorrowland being a total dud altogether, it almost seemed as if Disney's non-Marvel and Star Wars live-action films would be nothing but sequels, reboots, and remakes. But, it looks as though they're still giving it the old college try with their latest attempt: an adaptation of the classic novel A Wrinkle In Time. Unfortunately, however...a Waste of Time is possibly a better name for this film.

Unlike Red Sparrow and Annihilation before it, I actually have read the source material for this, so I knew what to expect here. For like 50% of the movie, it follows the story of the book fairly adequately, with the same basic plot of the main character, Meg, going off to find her father whom disappeared years before. However, that's only 50%...the other 50% is where the movie flies off the rails with various issues. For instance, there's a lot of missing plot lines from the book. That's normal for an adaptation of this caliber, but what's not normal is how the missing lines actually make the plot feel disjointed, rushed, and full of tropes.

And outside of that, it gets ultimately worse. The studios felt it was necessary to add new elements to try and fill up the emptiness left by the changes, but it only hurts more than it helps. What you end up with is a film that is a mess...that only halfway resembles what it was made to be. Gone are some of the adult themes that added weight, replaced by shit that actually makes you feel dumbed down to a child's level. It's actually atrocious to call it an adaptation, it's just a mere shell that's, "based," on the source.

Adding to the overall mess is performances by one of the most underwhelming cast in centuries. I'm not even going to go into detail about the child actors, but the professional actors seem largely wasted. Oprah plays a godlike character that falls into the god trope, Reese Witherspoon is kooky for the sake of it, Mindy Kaling could honestly be wiped out of the film entirely. Even Chris Pine who's known for sinking into and making some shitty parts great seems largely wasted overall. It makes you feel sad for all these people who, normally, can bring about a great performance, but here...yeah it's not great.

Honestly, apart from that slim 50%, there's no real redeeming qualities about A Wrinkle In Time, it's just another failed Disney live-action IP that will probably make a lot of money anyway because of what it is under the skin. I'm going to call it at a 4.7/10 because I know there's people who will enjoy it, I'm just not one of them. I'm grossly underwhelmed by this film and frankly, I don't know what to expect from the future of Disney's non-franchise films, but maybe it's just a fly in an otherwise well-done soup.