Before
seeing this movie, I dipped my toes into the reviews just enough to temper my
(admittedly ludicrously-high) expectations.
The film definitely isn’t everything I would’ve wanted it to be, but it’s
also better – in my opinion – than some of the rumblings made it out to
be. It’s an uneven film with some truly
remarkable pieces in it; more than anything, the whole falls short of the sum
of its parts.
Meg Murry,
awkward tween extraordinaire, has a lot of anger to direct everywhere – at her
own dissatisfaction with herself, at those who sneer at her at school, at the
world that’s taken her father from her with no hint of what happened to
him. Her world changes one night,
however, when Charles Wallace, her genius little brother, introduces her to his
new friends, the mysterious Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which. The three ladies prove far more than meets
the eye, and they take Meg and Charles Wallace – along with Calvin, another new
friend – on a fantastical journey to recover their father and to battle the
very forces of evil itself.
We’ll
start with what didn’t work for me so I can move on to what did. The main issues with the film seem to be
structural, somehow feeling overwritten and underwritten at the same time. Overwritten:
I lost count of how many times someone puts their hands on Meg’s
shoulders to deliver an earnest heart-to-heart in close-up. Underwritten:
rather like the first Hunger Games
movie, important things from the book just seem to mosey by onscreen without
the urgency or impact they had on the page.
The result is an awkward tone and a pace that often feels just a little
bit off.
There are
changes from the book, of course, though on the whole it is a pretty faithful
adaptation. The setting is both updated
to the present day and transferred to the opposite coast, and there are a
handful of plot elements that are tweaked, generally getting to the same result
in a different way. These are a mixed
bag. Some I like (the demonstration at
the Happy Medium’s place of how IT impacts people,) others not so much
(Camazotz is definitely at its creepiest in the scenes that follow the book,
not the ones that depart from it,) but none of it makes or breaks the film in a
serious way. I’ll admit to cracking up
at the moments when the production team obviously went, “Crap, there are no
action scenes in this book! Quick, have
Meg and Calvin run from uprooting trees for three minutes!”
By and
large, where the film succeeds is in its characters. Over the course of this film’s production,
every casting announcement either had me excited or fascinated, and pretty much
every actor delivers big time. And the
script, for all its structural issues, gets most of the characters right on a
fundamental level, and that was my one non-negotiable requirement for the film,
so regardless of the places where it disappoints me, I have to be grateful to
it for that much. Storm Reid is a
fantastic Meg – not quite as angry at the world, but clearly a ball of fears
and insecurities. She’s intelligent,
stubborn, self-criticizing, and driven by love, every inch the Meg Murry that
spoke to me so strongly when I was young.
And young Deric McCabe seriously impresses me as Charles Wallace. The film manages the careful tightrope that’s
so important for his character – he has to be brilliant and almost ridiculously-precocious,
but at the same time, he’s also very much a little kid. The sibling chemistry between McCabe and Reid
is great. As Calvin, Levi Miller has
less to do and is more generically-written, but the film does show Calvin to be
a decent guy who goes with the flow of their fantastic adventure remarkably
well.
Where the
adults are concerned, it’s basically nothing but knockouts. Reese Witherspoon is such an interesting
choice for Mrs. Whatsit, and while she’s not quite as prominent here as she is
in the book, Witherspoon nails the “bubbly and effervescent but also very blunt
and kind of rude” dynamic really well.
Mindy Kaling as Mrs. Who is another bold choice, and I have to say, she
is my absolute favorite part of this movie.
I love what they do with Mrs.
Who – I like that her quotes are a mix of classics and newer fare, I like that
she augments her speech with evocative gestures and elaborate handshakes, and
Kaling exudes such warmth in the role.
Oprah, playing Mrs. Which, is slightly playing Oprah as Mrs. Which,
which works surprisingly well; tween girls could certainly do a lot worse when it
comes to finding a mentor/good fairy.
Chris Pine and Gugu Mbatha-Raw are great as Mr. and Mrs. Murry – Pine gets
more to do, and definitely doesn’t waste the opportunity, but Mbatha-Raw is
strong enough in her limited screentime to make me want more of her. And finally, Zach Galifinakis makes for kind
of an awesome Happy Medium. It’s a
different take on the character, and not just because of the gender change,
but he brings both heart and eccentricity to the part.
Warnings
Scary
moments, brief violence, and thematic elements.
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