Wrinkle in Time, A
Entry updated 26 October 2026. Tagged: Film.
US film (2018). Walt Disney Company. Directed by Ava Du Vernay. Written by Jennifer Lee and Jeff Stockwell, based on A Wrinkle in Time (1962) by Madeleine L'Engle. Cast includes Mindy Kaling, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Deric McCabe, Levi Miller, Michael Peña, Chris Pine, Storm Reid, Oprah Winfrey, and Reese Witherspoon. 110 minutes; colour.
A teenage girl, Meg Murry (Reid), is being bullied at school, and she and her younger brother Charles Wallace (McCabe) remain concerned about their father, scientist Alex Murry (Pine), who has been missing for four years. Their neighbor Mrs. Whatsit (Witherspoon) informs them that Alex traveled to a distant world via the tesseract he was investigating (see Dimensions). They then meet two more strange women, Mrs. Which (Winfrey) and Mrs. Who (Kaling), who go with the pair and their friend Calvin (Miller) to another world in a quest to find their father. After some other travels, they reach the world Camazotz, where Alex is trapped; a man named Red (Peña), working for the sinister entity IT that rules Camazotz, takes mental control of Calvin, who then opposes them, though Meg and Charles Wallace locate Alex and flee with him. But Meg returns to defeat IT and bring Calvin home.
This film is trying very hard to be inspirational, as the action constantly stops so that a character can dispense yet another supposedly uplifting bromide; one reviewer counted at least 22 of them, which works out to one cliché every five minutes. However, screenwriters Lee and Stockwell chose to excise L'Engle's original warning about the dangers of conformity, evidently regarding such concerns as outdated, and replaced it with more contemporary mini-sermons about the importance of building one's self-esteem. And there is nit much else in the plot here that qualifies as truly inspirational, other than the very familiar affirmation of family values that is ubiquitous in contemporary Cinema. True, A Wrinkle in Time can be commended for generally following the novel's story line, replacing L'Engle's all-Caucasian cast with more diverse characters, and fleshing out her poorly developed settings with some striking visuals. But of course there is also some added violence, recalling another Disney production three years earlier, Tomorrowland, in being well-intentioned but ineffectual in delivering its hackneyed messages. [GW]
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