Children Will Enjoy ‘A Wrinkle in Time’ and That’s What Matters

First things first: if your kids want to see this A Wrinkle in Time, take them. Meg Murry and Dr. Kate Murry are beautiful and brilliant and with Charles Wallace and Alex show that family love doesn’t need shared blood or proximity. They get an A+ for the most wonderful portrayal of adoption and family bonds. A Wrinkle in Time is a meandering, disjointed, nonsensical slog through 109 minutes of 90s level CGI, heavy-handed dialogue, stilted acting, and shots up actors’ nostrils. 95% of the movie is made up of close-ups. The glimpses we do get of the colorful, sweeping landscapes — and trust, they’re only glimpses — are stunning until someone interacts with them. The standout moments from the trailers make up the missing 5% of shots and exist as the solid touchstones in the midst of a quantum gyroscope of a plot. It’s a startlingly mishandled film. The script skips around enough to leave you feeling like you’re existing within your own time wrinkles. Some moments linger and stretch long enough to leave them so thin they’re nearly transparent. Others spring from seemingly nowhere in jarring bursts before lying limply on screen until the camera pans away to someone else’s nose hairs. One character’s eating disorder gets hinted at and then forgotten while another’s verbally abusive parent is just kinda…hand waved away.

The points of light in a rough trip across the galaxy are the film’s young stars. Storm Reid as Meg Murry does her absolute best with a script that offers about …