'Wrinkle' neither folds nor soars

Visually abundant adaptation of popular novel falls short on wonder..

A New York Times article about the 90th edition of the Academy Awards referred to director Ava DuVernay (13th, Selma) as “one of Hollywood’s most aggressive advocates for diversity.” It only takes a few minutes of the big-screen adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time to know that DuVernay has no qualms about putting her convictions on screen.

A somewhat scattered, effects-laden adaptation of a popular novel by Madeleine L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time stands as both an adventure fantasy and an overdue helping of diverse casting. Its story sends the child of an interracial couple into alternate universes along with her adopted brother and a white teenage boy.

That’s not to say that A Wrinkle in Time takes diversity as its theme. Like many of the Disney movies that precede it, Wrinkle is an ode to the importance of family, as well as a recasting of a typical hero’s journey.

The movie’s main character — a brainy 13-year-old named Meg (Storm Reid) — faces many tests as she tries to establish herself as a warrior for the light; i.e., all that is good in the universe.

DuVernay has said that her movie primarily aims at 12-year-olds and those able to get into a 12-year-old state of mind. As someone for whom 12 barely exists as a memory, I found the movie to be an elaborate helping of children’s theater that proved wanting at the point when it's supposed to reach its emotional crescendo and a little too vague about what constitutes evil in the movie’s visually abundant universe.

I also found the cosmology depicted in A Wrinkle in Time a bit confusing but that may not matter to young audiences willing to go with flow in order to enjoy the movie's various odd sights: a beach where a character who embodies evil (Michael Pena) turns up or a strange cave-like place that's home to Happy Medium (Zach Galifianakis), a character whose name explains his outlook.

Though it brims with varied settings and costumes, the core of A Wrinkle in Time hinges on a simplistic binary battle between the light and the dark, evil being represented by a spidery looking creation that resembles an ink blot.

Three other-worldly beings serve as guides for young Meg’s journey, which involves something called a “tesseract.” As best as I could discern — and with help from Wikipedia — the tesseract is a phenomenon that creates folds in the fabric of space and time, allowing Meg and her companions to travel through the fifth dimension.

These guides are women with (what else?) special powers. Mrs. Whatsit (Reese Witherspoon) can turn herself into what looks like a giant green leaf that carries the movie’s adventurers like a magic carpet. Mrs. Who (Mindy Kaling) is a walking Bartlett’s book of quotations; she dispenses the wisdom of others. Mrs. Which (Oprah Winfrey) seems to materialize out of nothing.

When we first meet Mrs. Which, she’s clad in silver and as tall as one of those balloons in a holiday parade, looming large over everyone else, a visual choice that mirrors Winfrey’s status in the real-life world of media.

Meg’s interplanetary journey is motivated by a devastating loss. Her father (Chris Pine) has been missing for four years as the result of a quest to explore the furthest reaches of the galaxy. Meg was left to make do with her mom (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) and her brother Charles Wallace (Deric McCabe).

Meg journeys into other worlds to locate her scientist father and bring him home because, as we long ago learned from the The Wizard of Oz, no matter how intoxicating alternate realities can be, there’s no place like home.

Levi Miller portrays Calvin O’Keefe, a popular teenager who joins outcast Meg on her trippy pursuits, but his character doesn't seem to have much of a role beyond adding someone with whom younger boys may identify.

First seen in Twelve Years A Slave, Reid provides the movie with a solid center. Initially annoying, McCabe’s Charles Wallace grew on me, particularly when his body was taken over by the IT, a disembodied evil that turns him from a brainiac into a painiac.

The movie’s production team does a good job creating wavy wrinkles in time as Meg travels in the fifth dimension, and the movie certainly doesn't lack for other forms of visual invention. My favorite: a rigidly conformist suburban community where every kid stands in a driveway bouncing a beach ball in unison, a twisted idea of playtime.

I suppose the best fantasies create a sense of wonder that Wrinkle in Time can't quite achieve. It's probably not the keenest of critical insights or the heartiest of endorsements, but after a preview screening and a little reflection, I'd say the movie qualifies as "OK." I'd be lying if I didn't say I was hoping for more.

When Alice, 40, meets Harry, 27

Reese Witherspoon can't save a rom-com in which the romance isn't great -- and neither is the comedy.

Viewed through the most positive possible lens, the new romantic comedy Home Again has one element that might be regarded as fresh. A 40-year-old woman (Reese Witherspoon) disregards age differences and has an affair with a 27-year-old man (Pico Alexander).

Fair enough, but Home Again breaks little new ground with a mostly desexualized affair that stems less from desire than from confusions caused by a dissolving marriage. Besides, the whole age thing would have been more daring had Alice been written as a 50-year-old woman.

Witherspoon's Alice Kinney has arrived in Los Angeles with her two daughters (Eden Grace Redfield and Lola Flannery) to occupy the house of her late father, a well-respected director who also was known for his womanizing.

While partying at a bar with girlfriends on the occasion of her 40th birthday, Alice meets Harry (Alexander), an aspiring filmmaker.

Harry has arrived in LA with two filmmaking buddies (Nat Wolff and Jon Rudnitsky). The trio hopes to sell a screenplay writing based on a short that gained some recognition of the festival circuit.

After a drunken attempt at romance between Alice and Harry misfires, the three young men wind up living in Alice's guest house where they engage in annoyingly positive interactions with Alice's daughters and prove to be ideal tenants. Why not? They're not paying rent.

It's nice to see Candice Bergen in a brief role as Alice's mother, the woman who suggests that Alice shelter these apparently talented young men. Too bad, the screenplay gives Bergen so little to do.

Alice and Harry eventually begin a romance. The other two guys also have their eyes on Alice, but behave like gentlemen who become ridiculously (if not amusingly) protective of her when her estranged husband (Michael Sheen) arrives with hopes of patching up the marriage.

Director Hallie Meyers-Shyer -- the daughter of filmmakers Nancy Meyers (The Intern) and Charles Shyer (Baby Boom) -- has made the kind of romantic comedy that seems to exist behind the walls of a gated community where suffering is limited and all consequences easily are attenuated.

In starting her own business, Alice meets the duplicitous Zoey (Lake Bell), who hires Alice to decorate a child's bedroom. Zoey takes advantage of Alice, treating her like a nanny. Oh, the indignity.

OK, so rom-coms often rely on easy to swallow situations and posh surroundings, environments that soothe, offering palliative care for reality-weary audiences. But it's definitely disappointing to see Witherspoon, who created a real character in HBO's Big Little Lies, step backward into a world in which the most adventurous thing anyone might do is forgo the luxury of a personal shopper.

It takes a while, but 'Sing' connects

I'm not going belabor Sing, a commercially potent bit of family entertainment with a decent amount of humor to carry it past its dull spots. This animated romp centers on a show-biz loving koala bear named Buster Moon (voice by Matthew McConaughey) who needs to raise money to save his beloved theater. To achieve his goal, Buster decides to sponsor a singing contest. As the result of a misprint, the winners think they'll receive $100,000. Poor Buster. He intended to award only a $1,000 prize. The plot makes room for a teeming cast of anthropomorphic animals such as a rat who croons like Sinatra (Seth MacFarlane) and a very shy elephant (Tori Kelly) who eventually unleashes a potent rendition of Leonard Coen's Hallelujah. Scarlett Johansson voices a porcupine punk rocker. We also meet a singing pig (Reese Witherspoon) who tries to juggle motherhood and a stage career, no easy task because she has 25 piglet kids. Then there's the gorilla (Aaron Egerton) who abandons his criminal father's ways to pursue a career on stage, but still longs for Dad's approval. There are more animals, but I think you get the idea. Sing makes use of many already popular tunes before arriving at a finale that pretty much rescues the whole enterprise. Director Garth Jennings (Son of Rambow) and his team don't offer animated perfection, but Sing ought to give Moana some competition for holiday viewing in a season that's running short on fun fare.

'Hot Pursuit,' not even lukewarm

Reese Witherspoon joins with Sofia Vergara in search of comic heat.

Last year, Reese Witherspoon received praise and an Academy Award nomination for her performance in Wild, an adaptation of Cheryl Strayed's 2012 memoir about how Strayed found a measure of redemption by taking a solo, 1,100-mile trek along the Pacific Crest Trail.

That was then. The view from 2015 doesn't look nearly as good.

Witherspoon returns to action with Hot Pursuit, a painfully bad comedy that seems to have been engineered to float in the wake of The Heat, a female buddy movie that teamed a street-wise Boston cop (Melissa McCarthy) with a by-the-book FBI agent (Sandra Bullock).

As one of the film's producers, Witherspoon presumably had something to do with how Hot Pursuit turned out. Let's assume, then, that she wasn't totally victimized by a formulaic story, third-rate dialogue and bungled direction from Anne Fletcher.

For the record, Fletcher also directed the nearly unbearable Guilt Trip, a comedy starring Seth Rogen and Barbra Streisand, two performers who probably never again should be caught in the same movie, maybe even the same state.

Witherspoon teams with Sophia Vergara, who got an executive producer credit, for a story about a Texas cop who's assigned the task of guarding the wife of a key witness who's supposed to testify against a Colombian drug lord.

How off-key is the comedy? An early picture joke involves the way Witherspoon's Cooper mistakenly uses a Taser on an innocent youth, just the sort of gag we need in a post-Baltimore, post Ferguson world.

Witherspoon spends most of the movie being southern, perky, clueless and plain. Working the Latin bombshell routine as hard as she can, Vergara could pass for the love child that a union between Charo and Desi Arnaz might have produced.

The humor plays on the difference between the exaggerated sexuality of Vergara's character and the supposedly boyish looks of Witherspoon's Cooper. Not funny in the beginning and not funny at the end.

After a bit of violence eliminates Cooper's partner, she and Vergara's Daniella take flight in a road movie that has the two of them having what (for the sake of argument) we'll call adventures.

An example: In a confrontation with a Texas redneck, Cooper and Daniella pretend to be lesbians.

The two antagonists eventually become friends -- although not before the movie makes a last-minute attempt at behaving like a thriller.

And, yes, we see outtakes in which Vergara and Witherspoon crack each other up. I'm glad that they, at least, had a good time. But then, they didn't have to sit through this tin-eared mess of a movie.

Looking for renewal in the wilds

Reese Witherspoon carries Wild across the finish line.

Mired in a downward spiral that included drugs and promiscuity, Cheryl Strayed avoided the obvious. Rather than following the customary 12-step path to recovery, she took many thousands of steps.

In an attempt to quiet her demons, Strayed embarked on a 1,000-mile solo trek on the exceedingly difficult Pacific Crest Trail, which runs through California, Oregon and Washington.

To hike the Pacific Crest, one must adjust to sea-level altitudes, as well as to heights of more 13,000 feet -- not to mention the threat of snakes, wildlife, wild swings in weather (heat and snow) and scary isolation.

The resulting trek, which Strayed made in 1995, transformed her life and led to the publication of Wild, a best-selling 2012 memoir about her shattered life and restorative wilderness journey.

Actress Reese Witherspoon joins with director Jean-Marc Vallee (The Dallas Buyers Club) to bring Strayed's story to the screen, presenting Strayed's inner and outer journeys -- both of which resound with hardship.

The resultant movie allows Witherspoon to seize an opportunity to appear sans make-up and, at times, without psychological defenses. She's certainly up to the challenge.

Because Strayed traveled alone, her story has been taken as a statement of feminist triumph. Strayed entered a male domain and proved that she could survive the arduous hardships of the trail. Viewed that way, the story acquires additional heft.

Although not without its tensions, Strayed's wilderness adventure is presented in straightforward fashion. She began with a ridiculously heavy backpack and boots that were too small. Gradually, she learned how to keep herself going.

Strayed met men along the way, and Vallee treats most of these meetings as friendly and helpful, although one proves potentially threatening, something along Deliverance lines.

Strayed's plunge into a wanton life began with the death of her 45-year-old mother (Laura Dern) from cancer. That blow was followed by estrangement from her husband (Thomas Sadowski), who made several futile attempts to rescue her from self-imposed degradation.

Vallee chooses to deal with Strayed's torments by replicated the way our minds tend to be flooded by unwanted thoughts. It's a valid approach, but the movie's many flashbacks don't always work, perhaps because they often feel abrupt and fragmentary, as if they've been shot out of a cannon.

As Strayed hikes, she's constantly confronting images of sexual abandon and heroin addiction. She also recalls happy times with her loving mother (Laura Dern), a woman who had a bad track record with men. We learn about Strayed's relationship with a younger brother, who had his own difficulties accepting his mother's death.

British novelist and screenwriter Nick Hornby (About a Boy and An Education) seems to dispense with a third act. The hike ends, Strayed tells us that everything in her life (good and bad) may have been necessary for her to reach the purifying moment with which the film concludes.

That's a triumphant ending on the page; somehow -- or so it seemed to me -- it didn't seem quite so moving on screen.

When Strayed finally has her big emotional catharsis, she drops to her knees and weeps after an unexpected encounter with a boy and his grandmother. Vallee shoots this scene from behind Witherspoon. We see only her back and that ever-present backpack, prominent though reduced in size from the movie's early going.

Something about that image didn't feel right to me. I don't know exactly what I wanted so see at that precise moment, but it sure wasn't that damn backpack.

Still, Witherspoon's performance, the range of scenery captured by cinematographer's Yves Belanger's camera and the amazing fact of the story -- a brave soul with no-previous experience conquered the Pacific Crest trail on her own -- prove sufficient fuel to keep the movie marching forward.

Surviving the Sudanese Civil War

Forget Reese Witherspoon; it's the story of war and its ramifications that matters.

Although sometimes burdened by a by-the-numbers approach, The Good Lie tells an important story about a group of young Sudanese refugees trying to start new lives in the U.S.

I certainly wouldn't discourage anyone from seeing The Good Lie, primarily because it humanizes the consequences of a tragic civil war that raged in the Sudan from 1983 to 2005. The movie also boasts a level of sincerity that's almost startling when compared to most movies.

Reese Witherspoon, who plays a woman assigned to helping Sudanese young men find employment in the U.S., is the only recognizable face in a movie that's at its best when she's not around.

Nothing against Witherspoon, who doesn't show up until the picture has been running for 45 minutes. She's fine, but the story of how these young people -- emblematic of some 20,000 refugees in all -- fled their village, hiked hundreds of miles in search of safety, languished in refugee camps, and ultimately developed into war-scarred young adults is far more interesting.

Canadian director Philippe Falardeau (Monsieur Lazhar) introduces us to two brothers (Arnold Oceng and Femi Oguns) and their sister (Kuoth Wiel). We also meet another set of refugees (Ger Duany and Emmanuel Jai).

Oceng's character becomes the group's leader after his older brother makes a sacrifice that saves the other kids from being taken captive.

When the Sudanese refugees reach the United States, they're forced to split up. The boys -- young men by now -- are sent to Kansas City. Wiel's character is assigned to a Boston family.

Once in the U.S., much of the story depicts the cultural adjustments demanded of young men who have grown up in refugee camps and who know little about American life. It's all a bit predictable, but the plight of these youngsters -- drawn from real stories -- lingers.

The Good Lie may not be quite the powerhouse that was intended. It tries to raise the emotional stakes with a last-minute development that seems overly contrived, but -- at minimum -- reminds us that not all refugee stories ended happily in Kansas City.

Two spies compete for the love of one woman

This Means War: Another strained rom-com bites the dust.

Tom Hardy is an interesting young actor. Hardy made a strong impression as Ricky Tarr, a disillusioned spy in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. In the gritty -- if overpraised -- Warrior, he played a young man training for mixed martial arts combat.

If you really want to pull out all the Hardy stops, make an immediate point of seeing Bronson, a riveting British import in which Hardy played Michael Peterson, an unrepentant British criminal. And, yes, Hardy also appeared in Inception, in which he played a member of Leonardo Di Caprio’s dream-invading posse.

The 34-year-old Hardy is an interesting and versatile actor, one of those gifted performers who’s capable of being unrecognizable from picture to picture. That’s a good thing for him because Hardy’s appearance in This Mans War could mark a low point in what I trust will be a long and admirable career.

In this preposterous romance, Hardy plays a CIA agent who competes with another CIA agent (Chris Pine) for the affections of a perky woman (Reese Witherspoon) who hasn't had much luck when it comes to love.

Hardy portrays Tuck, a divorced father who shares a buddy bond with his long-time CIA partner FDR Foster (Pine). When the two demonstrate more improvisational flare than than the agency customarily tolerates, they wind up assigned to desk jobs by their no-nonsense boss (Angela Bassett). Basset’s so wasted in this movie, casting her amounts to a form of actor abuse.

The only thinking you’ll find here involves moving the screenplay from one contrivance to the next. Witherspoon portrays Lauren, a successful woman whose job involves evaluating consumer products. Each man meets Lauren independently of the other. When they discover they’re both taken with Lauren, they begin a competition for her affection, sometimes using sophisticated CIA surveillance equipment to aid them. And you were wondering why we have trillion dollar deficits.

To add an element of Mr. & Mrs. Smith-style danger, a fiendish criminal (Til Schweiger) is out to kill Tuck.

Although both agents are highly competitive, FDR is the more seasoned womanizer of the two. Tuck is a bit of a disadvantage in this area; he spends time with his young son and misses the family he lost, presumably because he was never around.

Comic actress Chelsea Handler rounds out the movie’s cast; she plays the sexually oriented, ultra-pragmatic and loud-mouthed best friend, a married woman who encourages Lauren to date both men and enjoy herself. Handler’s supposed to offer comic relief, but her role proves as cliched as roles get in this kind of strained rom-com affliction.

Perhaps as a sop to men who are dragged to This Means War, director McG (Terminator Salvation, Charlie's Angels and We Are Marshall) dishes out action, staging a bruising fight in a restaurant and an over-the-top finale involving a car chase. OK, we’re watching a fantasy romance, but in what world is it possible for two men to engage in a fight that destroys an upscale restaurant without the police showing up?

Pine, who appeared as young Captain Kirk in the 2009 edition of Star Trek and who had a nice turn with Denzel Washington in Unstoppable, doesn't exactly burn up the screen here. Hardy's a bit better at carrying his share of this unsavory load, and Witherspoon tries to bring spunk to a character that’s about as believable as CIA agents who act like frat boys. I wasn’t a fan of Water for Elephants -- Witherspoon’s last movie -- but at least that picture showed some ambition, which is more than can be said for This Means War, which tries to merge three genres -- romance, action and comedy -- and winds up making a mockery of each.

Besides, who needs a romance in which there’s more action in the streets than between the sheets? This Means War is a dud.

A slow-moving 'Water for Elephants'

Witherspoon and Pattinson try to carry Water for Elephants, which has its charms, but never quite gels.

It's an old caution, but there's a reason actors don't like to work with animals. Four-legged performers seem to have an easier time capturing our affections than those who walk upright, even if one of the two-legged creatures happens to be Tween heartthrob Robert Pattinson.

Water for Elephants - a carefully burnished adaptation of Sara Gruen's best-selling 2007 novel about a struggling circus -- proves the point, at least it did for me. Humans aside, the character I most cared about in this diligent adaptation of Gruen's novel was Rosie, an elephant.

Set during the Depression, Water for Elephants quickly establishes itself as a nostalgia-heavy hybrid: part love story and part animal act.

A welcome crack of the ringmaster's whip might have sped us through some of the movie's duller spots, and the movie's cast never quite gets, but Water for Elephants survives on atmosphere and grace, partly because it has been photographed with a keen appreciation for Americana by cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto.

Working from a script by Richard LaGravenese, director Francis Lawrence applies liberal amounts of storybook glow to a production that makes improbable co-stars out of Pattinson of Twilight fame and Oscar winners Reese Witherspoon (Walk the Line) and Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds).

Pattinson may draw fans to a movie that displays him in a warmer light than the Twilight series in which he plays a vampire and world-class brooder. I'm still not sure about Pattinson's acting, but I'm relieved to know he can smile.

In Water for Elephants, Pattinson plays Jacob Jankowsi, a senior at Cornell University. Jacob's about to receive his degree in veterinary science, when he learns that his Polish immigrant parents have been killed in an automobile accident.

Distraught and disoriented, Jacob leaves school and hops a freight. He quickly learns that he's caught a ride with a train belonging to the Benzini Bros. Circus. Jacob signs on as a roustabout, but his veterinary talents soon earn him a higher spot on the circus totem.

The movie, of course, is no Dr. Dolitte. Jacob's immediately attracted to Marlena (Witherspoon), the star of the circus' centerpiece act. Decked out in glittering costumes, Marlena stands on the backs of galloping horses. Why this is such a special act never is made clear: I'm no circus expert, but women atop horses seems like three-ring boilerplate to me.

Every movie romance needs an obstacle. So it's no surprise that Marlena is married. Her husband August (Waltz) owns the circus; he's an impresario who blends old-world charm, entrepreneurial gusto, show-business savvy and outright sadism.

August, who regards himself as the ruler of this empire of illusion, employs a unique method of downsizing. When times get tough, he throws an excess worker or two off his moving train, a procedure called "redlighting." He also brutalizes the animals in his circus.

Someone decided that Witherspoon should adopt a Jean Harlow platinum blonde look that fits the period. But she's in a role that would have perfectly fit a young Jessica Lange, someone with less of a cheerleader vibe.

Pattinson and Witherspoon may be a bit of a mismatch. There's chemistry between them - just not enough.

An alternately charming and scary Waltz does a semi-reprise of the sadistic Nazi he played in Inglourious Basterds. "The guy certainly knows how to hold the screen.

Water for Elephants both sentimentalizes and deglamorizes circus life, where all the patrons are known as rubes and the workers make up a close-knit fraternity of the alienated.

Lawrence begins the story with framing device. Hal Holbrook appears as the aged Jacob, a 90-year-old who has escaped from the old age home where he resides to visit a circus that has hit town. A circus manager listens as Jacob tells what has become a legendary story: how the Benzini Bros. Circus finally collapsed.

Because Jacob provides the story with off-screen narration, I found it mildly troubling that Lawrence used Pattinson to narrate instead of relying on Holbook's barrel-aged tones, which would have given the story more flavor.

The story becomes increasingly melodramatic, and no one is likely to confuse Water for Elephants with a realistic look at the Depression, but Lawrence seems to be bending over backward to be respectful of Gruen's novel, an understandable strategy but one that doesn't always result in the best movie.

Fittingly, the other star of Water for Elephants is Rosie, an elephant August buys to boost the circus' sagging box office. And, yes, Rosie steals every scene in which she appears. So let me relieve you of some guilt. If you feel more for Rosie than for any of the movie's human characters, I doubt whether you'll be alone. That says a lot for Tai (the 42-year-old elephant playing Rosie) and not as much for the movie itself.