By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4.5 cats
Director: John Kent Harrison
Starring: Alfre Woodard | Alison Elliot | David Dorfman | Gregory Smith | Kate Nelligan | Katie Stuart
Country: canada
Year: 2004
Running time: 251
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0290382/combined
Robert says: “Author Madeleine L’Engle has been compared to titans like Isaac Asimov, both for the sheer volume of her literary output and the wide variety of it. L’Engle’s Newberry Award-winning young adult fantasy novel, A Wrinkle In Time, first published in 1962 — before Harry Potter scribe J.K. Rowling was even born, mind you — has finally found its way to its multi-generational legion of fans. This, of course, is despite Disney’s counterintuitive decision to air it on ABC in the late 8-11 time slot on a school night in May 2004, but the home video market being The Great Equalizer, this breathtakingly imaginative story can now be seen far and wide.
“When brooding teen Meg Murry (Katie Stuart of X2) learns that her scientist father was spirited away through a ‘tesseract’ — a sort of wormhole or shortcut through space — and did not really just up-and-leave her family, she embarks on a dangerous journey to bring him back. Aided by cosmic grand dames Mrs. Which (Kate Nelligan), Mrs. Who (Alison Elliott) and Mrs. Whatsit (Alfre Woodard), Meg and her brainiac little brother, Charles Wallace (David Dorfman) and crush Calvin O’Keefe (Gregory Smith) traverse the universe where they encounter the purely evil, planet-swallowing It.
“There are certainly comparisons to be made to the likes of sci-fi authors Ray Bradbury and Ursula LeGuin, but L’Engle was never pigeonholed as such, much to the joy of her range of fans. While A WRINKLE IN TIME does have certain elements of science fiction, it is much more of a coming-of-age story, and a lovely one, at that. L’Engle explores themes such as abandonment, self-discovery and empowerment and unconditional love, and Disney has done an incredible job bringing so much of that to life here.
” Remarkably, this is only the second of L’Engle’s works to get any kind of screen treatment (the first being 2002’s A Ring
of Endless Light). With any luck, someone will take on the other three Wrinkle books, and L’Engle, now in her 80’s, will finish the fifth, The Eye Begins To See, during her lifetime. 4 1/2 cats”