“A Wrinkle in Time” (PG)

There’s a lot of plot that needs to be ironed out in Disney’s new big-budget adaptation of Madeleine L’Engle’s classic 1962 children’s novel “A Wrinkle in Time,” and despite the well-intentioned efforts of director Ava DuVernay, the film struggles to find a way to come together in a cohesive manner.

Storm Reid stars as Meg Murry, the young daughter of scientists Alex and Kate Murry (Chris Pine and Gugu Mbatha-Raw) who has clearly inherited her father’s expansive knowledge of astrophysics. Alex’s obsession, however, with the space-time continuum leads to his mysterious disappearance, plunging Meg into four-year funk that suddenly changes when three celestial beings, Mrs. Which (Oprah Winfrey), Mrs. Whatsit (Reese Witherspoon) and Mrs. Who (Mindy Kaling) turn up in her backyard with the promising information about the location of her father.

Accompanied by her brother, Charles Wallace (Deric McCabe) and friend Calvin (Levi Miller), Meg embarks with the otherworldly beings on fantastical trek that transcends the boundaries of space and time. The voyage leads them to different planets and ultimately, the dark world known as The It that is holding Alex captive, where she must use her mind to defeat evil if her father is ever to be freed.

There’s no question that “A Wrinkle in Time” is stunning piece of work from a visual standpoint, as DuVernay does her best to describe L’Engle’s intricately detailed source material. But where the visuals excel the narrative falters, where the discussion of tesseracts (“tessering” is the term they use for traveling) and quantum physics quickly becomes confused and offers no solutions to move the plot forward in meaningful and sensible way.

Instead, the film takes on bizarre if not creepy tones at times, and even without the weirdness, the film is way too cerebral for its intended kid audience (if not the adults accompanying them). The ambitious concept worked wonders for Christopher Nolan with “Interstellar,” but as for “A Wrinkle in Time,” DuVernay is lost in space.

Lammometer: 5 (out of 10)

Tim Lammers reviews movies weekly for The KQ92 Morning Show,” “KARE 11 News at 11” (NBC), WCCO-AM, WJON-AM, 103.7-FM The Loon, “The Tom Barnard Podcast” and “The BS Show” with Bob Sansevere.

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