The Book Really Was Better

I waited until after watching the movie of "A wrinkle in Time" to blog. I had an idea somewhere in the back of my mind that it couldn't be as bad as everyone was making it out to be. Well, I was wrong in the most extreme sense. It was not only a terrible movie, but it ranked with Napoleon Dynamite as being one of the most meaningless, annoying and poorly done movies of all time.

There were several annoyances that made the movie much worse than it had to be. It they cut the time it took the children and "ladies" to "tesser" the movie time would have been shortened by what felt like a half. With many of the characters (Aunt Beast, Mrs. Whatsit as a seraph), they tried to come as close as possible to the creatures described in the book. However, this simply made to movie weird. The characters turned out to be revoltingly ugly and unbelievable. If they had just made Mrs. Whatsit a centaur instead (with wings of course) it would have been much more aesthetically pleasing and the majesty of the animals described in the book much more apparent.

Far from trying to stay close to the book in the dialogue area, the movie strayed dreadfully. What was probably most damaging to the movie was the fact that they removed all religious content and this defeats the purpose of the book. There is no more interplay between religion and science, no more subtle and clever allusions. There is absolutely nothing to talk about because there really is no hidden, deeper meaning. It is simply a story about a girl, whose brother is really smart, and some boy who no one really knows why he is there, and a father who got lost. Really the only "lesson" left to learn is that it is good to love.

This was a disappointing adaptation and should be banned.