A Wrinkle In Time

[James885]

Anyone check this out over the weekend? Sadly, I thought it was a gorgeous looking mess and a lot of slick visual style with little to no substance. 

I love Ava DuVernay, but I'm not sure this was the right property for her. It may not be the right property for anyone, as the source material has proven notoriously hard to adapt. 

[Call_me_jorge]

I saw it and enjoyed it. It wasn’t the best film ever and I’m still slightly confused by the plot, but nothing beats Mindy Kaling, Reese Witherspoon and Oprah on screen together.

[TheGingerBreadMan]

This film was a major misfire for me. The visuals were beautiful, but the acting, writing, and directing all left me cold. I wanted so much more out of it. I left feeling like the characters never made me care about any of them. They attempted to have a very heartfelt emotional core that just wasn't there. I agree that this property is very difficult to adapt - but I would like to see somebody get it right somewhere. I think that it's possible.

[ACL2006]

The reviews for this have not been kind.

[newintown]

The trailers alone make this look like it has little to do with the small, strange, gritty book I loved as a kid. If a film really needed to be made, I would have preferred a small independent simple project, not an Oprah Spectacle.

[darquegk]

The best adaptation of "A Wrinkle in Time" ever made isn't even a direct adaptation: it's the song "Supper's Ready" by Genesis. It takes the book's central themes of sci-fi fantasy, Christian pantheism, mutability of existence and identity, fear of controlling "strongman" leaders and ultimate near-apocalyptic grandeur and synthesizes them into a parallel journey.

[sabrelady]

This generations "Fantasia". Watch stoned and you'll enjoy it more and it might make more sense.

The minute I heard it had been updated-because so much of the period it was written in informed the immediacy of the book- I knew this was one that was going to be lost in translation. 

Meg with out metal braces? The whole Harper Valley PTA judgement of the community about the "missing" husband?   The "Little Boxes " of  Camazotz conformity.? And don't get me started on Charles Wallace!

Too much got lost- remember G*d IS in the details.

[Someone in a Tree2]

Knowing it was never going to totally succeed in capturing what I loved most about the book, I went in with open eyes and quite enjoyed a good 3/4 of it on its own terms. The very best new ideas (the Missus's floating in the field of wheat, the kids in the subdivision bouncing their balls in unison) showed up already in the trailer, so lost a little of the surprise factor. The surreal sense of floating from one dream scenario to another without a clear way out matched my memory of the book to a tee. 

Then they got to the last reel where the thing pretty much collapsed. The imagery and staging of the final confrontation with IT made not a lick of sense, and they threw away the very best idea in the book: that the IT forced everyone to breathe in unison and that the only way to defeat it was to overwhelm it not with hate but with LOVE. Replacing all that with a wan study in girl-power that totally ignored the 2 other boys involved in the journey left me cranky and impatient for the credits to just roll already. 

[spiderdj82]

Welp......

 

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/m/fb939767-d730-3226-8e86-7ca0c0ab97d6/ss_director-ava-duvernay-is-not.html

[darreyl102]

Did anyone see the first adaption Disney did? It came out around 2003. I have it on DVD but haven't watched it. How does this version compared to the other one?

[James885]

The TV movie was also bad. Madeleine L'Engel is quoted as saying she thought it was awful.

[TheGingerBreadMan]

While it is true that white people do not and cannot truly and fully understand the black experience, that is not the problem with this movie, and for DuVernay to try to claim that it is the issue is ludicrous. It simply isn't a good movie - that is something that is being agreed upon by white, black, Asian, latinx, etc people alike. It's not a case of "not understanding" her vision - it's a case of her vision not working. She needs to realize that she missed the mark with this movie and move on.

[newintown]

Every artist's failure seems to be someone else's fault, due to racism, misogyny, antisemitism, homophobia, or some other prejudice. It's never due to the fact that work simply may not be good.

[Jay Lerner-Z]

Ava DuVernay never said racism was to blame for the bad reviews, or even implied it.

 

[newintown]

"“You were the only Caucasian journalist of any gender to see it, understand it and seriously ask me about it..."

The word "racism" may not be there, but that's a clear accusation of racism.

[Jay Lerner-Z]

I read it as a simple statement of fact.

Her tweet was responding specifically to a comment on Meg's hair, not the movie as a whole. She was saying that only one Causasian journalist picked up on that aspect of the story. That's all.