Movie Review: 'A Wrinkle in Time'

A Wrinkle in Time is a genuine delight. Wonderful characters, genuine laughs, and gorgeous visuals make for one of the best family adventures in a very long time. Director Ava DuVernay has taken the beloved bestselling book by Madeleine L’Engle and crafted a genuine blockbuster that retains the inspiring heart of its beloved source material. DuVernay has also discovered a brand new movie star in young Storm Reid.

Meg Murray (Reid) has been a lost soul since the disappearance of her father (Chris Pine) four years earlier. At school, she is bullied by a group of mean girls and her grades have fallen dramatically. At home, she still has her loving mother (Gugu Mbatha Raw) and little brother, Charles Wallace (Deric McCabe), the only people capable of making her smile even as they are also a constant reminder of the absence of her father.

Where is Meg’s dad? He’s lost in space, quite literally. Dad discovered the Tesseract, a barrier between universes that can be crossed via the mind. Unfortunately, he failed to tell anyone before entering the Tesseract and becoming lost in a parallel universe. While Meg hasn’t given up hope that her father is still alive, she remains dubious when a strange woman calling herself Mrs. Whatsit (Reese Witherspoon) arrives at her home, offering the chance to get her dad back.

From there, Meg, along with Charles Wallace and her school crush, Calvin (Levi Miller), join Mrs. Whatsit, the equally strange Mrs. Who, and the inspiring Mrs. Which for a trip to various parallel universes as they search for Meg’s dad. Along the way, they will confront Meg’s many anxieties in the forms of alien figures and battle the evil known as "The It" for the chance to rescue Dad.

A Wrinkle in Time is a minor masterpiece in the power of positive thinking. That sounds corny, but director Ava DuVernay is so committed to this notion that it becomes impossible not to be won over by it. The movie is just so darn positive that it becomes infectious, even if, like me, you’re a member of the most cynical generation in history: Generation X.

DuVernay skillfully places A Wrinkle in Time into our current era. The book was written back in 1962. The film is a rebuke of the culture of YouTube comments sections, subtweets, and bullying in all of its forms. It shouldn't feel like a revelation, but given how ugly things have been in recent years, the lovely rhetoric about light defeating the dark plays like a refreshing revelation in the hands of the remarkable Ava DuVernay.

Storm Reid is a young superstar in the making. Her presence and virtuosity leap off the screen. It helps that she is backed up by Oprah at her most inspirational and Reese Witherspoon at her most charming, but really, it’s Reid who owns the screen in A Wrinkle in Time. Ava DuVernay has said that the movie is a love letter to young black girls and it’s not hard to imagine generations of young black girls seeing themselves in Meg, a curious, thoughtful, and resourceful young woman who owns her flaws and makes them strengths.

I truly enjoyed A Wrinkle in Time. I loved the characters, I loved the adventure, and I love the look of the movie; a gorgeous mix of CGI, costume and set design, and brilliant cinematography by Tobias A. Schliesser, known for his similarly brilliant work on Dreamgirls and the live action Beauty and the Beast. And I can’t forget to praise the music score by Game of Thrones composer Ramin Djawadi, who delivers a lovely, ethereal, and fully modern soundtrack that perfectly complements the adventure.

There is a slightly cornball quality to A Wrinkle in Time—a naïve earnestness that, in the wrong hands, would drive me nuts. However, in the capable hands of a genuine auteur like Ava DuVernay, these qualities become strengths. When Oprah starts in on the notion of how the universe needs warriors of the light, those that fight hate with love and compassion, I was tempted to gag, but A Wrinkle in Time is so entertaining, so sweet and so genuine, I just went with it, and eventually, I fell in love with its simplicity.