I have seen great books turned into awful films. Ella Enchanted is a perfect example of a terrible and soulless adaptation of a wonderful and charming book. Eragon and Inkheart are also prime examples of the beloved source material being completely ignored in exchange for a disheartening cinematic experience. But this movie...this movie in my opinion takes the cake for worst adaptation of all time. Here are my thoughts on A Wrinkle in Time.
In 1960, Madeleine L'Engle was a struggling author shopping around her completed novel A Wrinkle in Time. She was rejected 30 times until her novel was finally accepted and published in 1962. It turned out to be her most successful novel, winning the Newberry Medal for literature. It is still revered as a classic today, blending science and L'Engle's Christian faith as well as depicting one of the first female protagonists in a science fiction novel. It's a fascinating and engrossing read, written with such great diction and strength, by far one of the best books I've ever read. Fast forward to 2018 and Disney has delivered one of the most atrocious movies I've ever had the displeasure of watching. That movie is A Wrinkle in Time, based on L'Engle's beloved novel. The film is directed by Ava DuVernay, a director hot off the success of critically acclaimed films such as Selma (2014) and 13th (2016). The cast is filled to the brim with stars such as Reese Witherspoon, Oprah Winfrey, Chris Pine, Michael Pena, and Zach Galifianakis. The script was written by Jennifer Lee, who directed a little Disney movie called Frozen and wrote Zootopia, one of my favorite movies of all time. With all of that talent involved, this should have been a runaway success. But it's not. In fact, it's quite the opposite. This movie is bad. This movie is really really really bad. So why is this movie bad? For one thing, it seems like absolutely no one read the novel. Parts were added into the movie that were not in the book, which sometimes isn't a huge problem in film adaptations of books (the elves were certainly not at Helm's Deep in Two Towers, but it doesn't bother me), but these new additions added absolutely nothing to the story and were unnecessary. Many of the characters in the movie acted nothing like their novel counterparts. For instance, Charles Wallace is portrayed as sincere, quiet, and intelligent in the novel, whereas in the movie he's portrayed as obnoxious, pretentious, and annoying. Which is a shame because Charles Wallace is one of the most important (and one of my favorite) characters in the novel. What bothered me the most, however, is that important parts from the novel are glossed over and completely cut from the movie. Where's Aunt Beast? She's the reason why Meg goes to Camazotz to save Charles Wallace in the first place! Instead it's replaced with a garish CGI-riddled confrontation between Meg and Charles Wallace that's laughably bad. Why is Calvin even there in the first place? Calvin is a great and strong-minded character in the book, but in the movie he's no more than a love interest for Meg that doesn't do anything of importance. You could've taken him out of the movie and there would've been nothing lost. Why in the world is the Happy Medium portrayed as a sarcastic stereotypical Zach Galifianakis character? Why is Mrs. Whatsit so unnecessarily mean to Meg when she wasn't that way in the book at all? What's the point of making Charles Wallace adopted when he's not in the book? Point is I could go on and on about how bad this adaptation is, but I need to talk about the other issues. The acting is so hit and miss in this film. I can see that everyone is trying their best (mostly), but the script really isn't doing them any favors. Instead of using L'Engle's intelligent and philosophical style, Lee substitutes that with safe cookie cutter writing that uses horrible dated references to attempt to get laughs and cliched concepts that would be more suited for cheesy Hallmark movies. The worst actors by far are the child actors. There are child actors who do great with their material (Jacob Tremblay in Room and Dafne Keen in Logan are prime examples), but that also has to do with how competent the filmmakers are in executing direction and script, which this films fails at on both aspects. It also has to do with the fact that Tremblay and Keen are naturally great actors. Storm Reid, who portrays Meg, is the better of the three leads by far and I feel like she's sincere in her performance for the most part. It's not great, but it's not awful. Levi Miller as Calvin is wooden and unmoving and Deric McCabe is just plain awful as Charles Wallace. Because of the stilted acting and the blundering script, I felt no emotional connection to any of the characters nor did any of the characters resonate with me. There were moments where, if it were any other movie, I definitely would've cried, but because of how poorly put together and emotionally shallow this movie was, I certainly did not. For a movie that was made with an $100 million dollar budget, this movie sure does look bad. The CGI is unbelievably appalling. Every time I saw Oprah the giant I would just laugh at how ridiculous she looked. Also didn't help that she was wearing what looked like a mermaid outfit. When Reese Witherspoon turned into a giant lettuce, I thought to myself "I don't think this is how I imagined it in the book". Terrible film adaptation comment aside, the flying giant lettuce monster looked ridiculous. I will admit, the bright color palette was appealing to the eye, but the problem is that it all looked so...fake. It was very clear that it was all green screened. It's like DuVernay didn't even try to make it look real. Lastly, the whole movie is BORING. The film moves slower than a snail's pace and some scenes took what felt like forever to get through, although that was probably because they were painful to watch as well. The musical score is generic and just downright tedious to listen to, which doesn't help the movie's already lethargic feel. And why why WHY did DuVernay feel the need to add pop songs to this movie??? Whenever I heard a pop song, it would immediately take me out of the movie, although honestly I was already tuning out about half an hour into the movie. It made it feel like I was watching an angsty teen drama instead of the deep science fiction epic that it was SUPPOSED to be. Is this the worst adaptation I've ever seen? Yes, yes it is. I cannot emphasize this enough: if Hollywood plans to hand the keys of a well beloved classic over to someone, those filmmakers better damn well read the source material and at least attempt to understand what made the source material so special in the first place. More than likely, audiences will appreciate it. Ava DuVernay and Jennifer Lee clearly did not understand that and delivered a horribly underwhelming and generic cinematic experience. If you want to see just how much audiences hated it, just look at the 4.2 IMDb score it has. This movie is close to being on the Bottom 100 list on IMDb. I gave it a 1, although I would've given it a 0 if I had been given the option. Disney doesn't usually deliver duds like this, but A Wrinkle in Time is an awful adaptation that is the epitome of failure on every level possible. Madeleine L'Engle must be rolling over in her grave now. Rating: 0/10 Bottom of the Barrel
1 Comment
Very few films have left me speechless and shocked at just how CONFOUNDING the final product turns out to be. This is one of those films. Here's my review of Dune (1984).
David Lynch's Dune (1984) is a very hard movie to put into words. I've seen movies where I've been completely lost as to how I felt about it. Hell, I still feel that way about Where the Wild Things Are and that was almost 10 years ago at this point. I've seen movies where I'm speechless at just how frustrated I felt by the end (Last Jedi anyone?). Much to my chagrin, Dune perfectly combines both. Now, I have never read Frank Herbert's books nor do I ever plan to, so it might be unfair for me to even review this movie. However, I feel like it's in my best interest to explore my thoughts on this movie because this movie is truly something else. I have never seen such an ambitious film like Dune (1984). I don't think that's a compliment though. I think David Lynch tried biting off more than he could chew and, from what I've read, he didn't get much say in the final cut. With that being said, it does strike me as a very Lynchian film. It has surreal imagery and an overall incredibly weird vibe, but Lynch wouldn't have it any other way. It has bizarre cut scenes and sequences that are jarring and amplifies the mystical ambience of the movie. While I appreciate Lynch's signature style, the movie gets lost due to the horrible pacing of the movie and the confounding storylines. And here's where we really dive into what makes this movie unbelievably infuriating: the pacing of this story is so damn slow and the story itself is extremely confusing. The movie moves at a snail's pace and I felt that at many times nothing of importance was happening in the movie. It would stall for long periods of time while what was happening on screen just didn't mean anything in the long run. Things would happen and then were never touched on again. What was the spice? What made it special? Why were the worms connected to the spice and vice versa? Why is everyone ALWAYS INNER MONOLOGUING? These questions and many more are never answered. Maybe the book explains it, but the movie certainly does not. Of course, I would imagine things would be explained more thoroughly in the books considering there are 6 books that Herbert wrote himself. And while the books may be highly regarded, the story in the movie is a complete mess. There were scenes where I literally yelled at the screen "why did that happen?" or "what does that mean?" or "how did that happen?" or "why did they slow down on everything except the rushed romantic subplot that was foreshadowed earlier in the film?" I was scratching my head at probably half of the movie. The storylines were a jumbled discombobulated mess that also included prophecies and clairvoyance and other stuff that were mentioned but of course not made clear. It struck me that this was trying to be a revolutionary and complex sci-fi story, but failed miserably in its execution. What makes all of this frustrating as well is the absolute waste of such a talented cast. Let's run down some of the cast: Kyle MacLachlan, Patrick Stewart, Jose Ferrer, Linda Hunt, Richard Jordan, Virginia Madsen, Max Von Sydow, Sean Young, Jurgen Prochnow, Brad Dourif, Dean Stockwell. That cast alone should've carried this movie, and it seems to me that they are really trying their best. However, the script and the story bogs down the movie and really does none of these insanely talented actors and actresses any favors. Also, Sting is in this movie? But he doesn't...do anything, or say anything for that matter (he might've said maybe 30 words in total?). His character pops up from time to time, but he only has one pivotal scene and that's it. Also, it should be noted that Toto and Brian Eno did the music, which sounds really cool, but the music is unfortunately nothing special. I've heard so much about this movie from my wife and her dad, so I was more than excited to see this movie. They had even said beforehand that it wasn't a great flick, but I didn't realize it was going to be this bad. This movie is dull and dreadfully boring. This movie is frustrating and confusing. The special effects are laughably bad. Yes, this movie was released in 1984, but in perspective, Tron was released in 1982 and those special effects look way better. The movie LOOKS expensive in set design and production and the budget for the time was $40 million, which was about $20 million more than Tron, thus there's no excuse as to why Dune's special effects look so shoddy in comparison. To add insult to injury, the movie ends so abruptly it just left me shocked, but I suppose I shouldn't have expected anything else. Overall, Muad'Dib's tale of mysticism and adventure should've been something magical, but instead ends up being a perplexing and puzzling heap of a film. Hopefully Denis Villeneuve does better with the reboot. Fingers crossed. However, if you're interested in seeing what Dune COULD'VE been, watch the documentary Jodorowsky's Dune. It explores surreal filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky's vision of the film that he was unable to fund, which would've been absolutely bonkers. That movie would've been a 10/10. David Lynch's Dune, however, is a 1.5/10 |
AuthorBuster Bigelow: 30 year old lover of movies, cinema, and music. Whether you agree or disagree with my reviews, I'd love to hear what you think in the comments! Archives
June 2020
Categories
All
|
"Every great film should seem new every time you see it."
-Roger Ebert
Copyright © 2015