A Wrinkle in Time

Selma director Ava DuVernay's adaptation of Madeleine L'Engle's 1962 fantasy adventure (and school-library favourite) is a peculiarly inert coming-of-age affair that couldn't be blander or more twee. Thirteen-year-old Meg Murry (Storm Reid) embarks on a multi-dimensional, intergalactic quest to far-flung worlds to find her missing scientist father (Chris Pine). Aided by celestial travellers Mrs Which, Whatsit and Who (Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon and Mindy Kaling, all inexplicably dressed like drag queens), Meg's biggest enemy is the It, the self-doubt and darkness inside herself. With an incoherent style best described as vanilla Avatar drenched in rainbow tackiness, which highlights gossipy flowers, Stepford kids, a leaf dragon and tesseract equations, the CS Lewis-lite theological parallels fall flat while the insubstantial action consistently flags and refuses to soar. Likeable Reid barely holds the fantasy bluster together in what quickly becomes a charmless and tiresome routine battle between insipid good and exaggerated evil.