A Wrinkle in Time (2018) wasn't a bad movie

So, until last week I'd never watched A Wrinkle in Time because the Internet absolutely tore it apart and not only were critic scores low, but every individual review I came across (both people who liked the original book and those who didn't) were saying it was the worst thing ever. I saw one comment from a gentleman who claimed to be a cinema usher; he said a child kept coming out of the movie to ask how much longer until it was over. Now maybe I'm just a fussy old millennial yelling at a cloud and shaking my fist, but when I was a kid, movies were *treats*. Going to the movies (or seeing a movie in school) was such a cool change in routine you almost didn't care *what* you were seeing. I sat through sports movies I'd never watch as an adult or even an older teen because that's not my thing; I sat through family comedies I personally never laughed at. So I was wondering HOW bad a movie that didn't have the runtime of Lord of the Rings or a Bollywood movie had to actually be for a kid to want out. But I recently read the book and (as I'd already seen the 2003 television version) I couldn't help being curious about the theatrical major motion picture in spite of myself. In the end, I ultimately gave it a chance mainly because (I'm not gonna lie) I found out part of it was filmed in New Zealand and ever since Andrew Adamson's Narnia movies, I've been a wee bit obsessed with NZ. And I'm wondering did I somehow see a different movie from everyone else? *This* is bad? I was expecting horrible child acting, Oprah mugging the screen every five minutes, obnoxious almost unwatchable editing, huge changes to the story and message, and literally...none of that was in this movie? I mean, apart from a few minor characters being cut or gender swapped and a centaur now being a giant flying lettuce-looking creature, it doesn't differ that significantly from the source. Honestly adaptation-wise it reminds me of what Disney adaptations of famous children's books used to be like, keeping the core family values but making various stylistic changes for the sake of costumes and pacing and such like. Really I found it very similar to how they adapted Tuck Everlasting in the early 2000s. Imo, The Princess Diaries was a MUCH worse adaptation than this, had some actually terrible toxic messages to boot, and somehow that was accepted and continues to get good reviews more than twenty years later, yet this one got dragged over the coals. Now, I do remember the marketing for this movie being ghastly and not actually talking a ton of what the movie was about, just who was in it, and I think Brie Larson might have (despite intending well) damned it somewhat by title dropping it in one of her speeches that got taken out of context. I wish she'd picked a different movie as her example, I really do. And I'm willing to concede maybe the film died the death of a thousand edits; it flows better than movies like The Golden Compass that obviously had too many cooks in the kitchen (eyes in the studio) when it came to editing, but watching deleted scenes like the ant on a string bit where Meg literally explained the entire premise of the movie does tell me the film could have had quite a lot more substance to it if it wasn't so drastically streamlined. It doesn't feel despite all the money Disney pumped into this they were making it with the sequels in mind for future adaptation at all, but as a one off movie I think they managed to get all the wrong butts in the seats somehow because it's not a bad movie on its own! I was legitimately impressed by the look and effects, flow, even the humour worked better than in some other family films I've seen. It was also nice to just see something that felt completely appropriate for children, no innuendos, no bad words; this is a movie a family could feel comfortable putting on when Grandma comes to visit, you know? It just felt so soothing and wholesome. I'm hoping kids who weren't around for the unfortunate marketing choices and critical sinking grow up with this and make it a cult family classic, because it really deserves better than what it got.