Wrinkle In Time: Book vs Movie

 

I was around 7 or 8 when I first encountered Madeleine L'Engle's scifi/adventure epic A Wrinkle In Time through a classroom read-aloud situation. At that age, my brain wasn't quite ready to grasp the abstract concept of high-speed inter-dimensional travel... although not long afterward my cousins and I would become obsessed with Star Wars which, as you know, utilizes a concept similar to Tessering so the heroes and bad guys can chase each other from one end of the universe to the other in a matter of moments...just with ships, not people (although pretty sure Yoda could've managed, if he wasn't so busy being a hermit). All that said, I wasn't really too into the book. Nor were many of my classmates.

When the Disney movie came out a few years ago, I decided to revisit the book so I could watch the film adaption...which looked pretty visually stunning (at least from the trailer). So I reread the book and ended up kind of liking it. Unfortunately, life got in the way of seeing the movie. Until this past weekend when I remembered I wanted to see it and rented it from Oxford Public Library's Teen Collection.

And I wish I hadn't.

Yes, the film adaption was as visually beautiful...almost to the point of overkill. But the rest if it was awful. Scenes central the plot were cut while other scenes that didn't further the story in the least were added for no other reason that to create unneeded drama (or just to dump in more CG effects). Not even one of the actors were right for the parts they played and the characters themselves were written all wrong. For example, the three Mrs. W's were not at all like they were in the book. And the overall tone was wrong. The book is actually pretty dark, but the movie was a brightly-colored, candy-coated bit of fluff that was so different from the source material I felt it was disrespectful. I told my husband that Tim Burton or The Duffer Brothers would have been a much better choice to direct this movie adaption.

So... I would absolutely recommend the BOOK A Wrinkle In Time. But do yourself a favor and skip the movie.

--AJB

p.s. That disturbing creature that's part Sting Ray, part cabbage will haunt my nightmares for the rest of my life.