Finally watched a copy of Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time as produced by ABC/Disney, and as borrowed from the Testerfolk.

I'm ... disappointed. And the more I consider it (having finished rereading the book in the last month), the more disappointed I am. The TV movie is to the book as the Rankin-Bass Return of the King is to its inspiration -- entertaining, perhaps, especially to those who haven't read the source material, but of a shallowness that betrays the original.

Part of what makes the Newberry award-winning 1962 book such a classic is not the fantastic adventure that the kids go on, but the underlying lessons that it addresses -- questions of good and evil, of personal responsibility, of how to judge one's own value, of individuality and freedom. Like many of L'Engle's books, it's a deeply spiritual and philosophical tale, and remarkably sophisticated for a juvenile novel.

And this isn't. There's a bit of that sort of thing left, painted on the surface, but it's been tweaked and jiggered and punched up and toned down so much that what's left in the screenplay (by Susan Shilladay) is something just a small tick above the average After School Special. (Well, if they still made those, that is.) The direction (John Kent Harrison) is adequate, but nothing special.

• The casting of the witches, key supporting players, is weak -- they're too young, for one thing -- and the story seemingly feels it necessary to fix up some sort of conflict among them to justify their presence. They're too eager to explain things, or be snarky. And Mrs Whats-It (Alfre Woodard) is ... just too goofy, too ready to pointedly note the sf-ish elements of the tale, too smug and glib and melodramatic. To be honest, none of them strike me as particularly likeable, let alone such to foster loyalty and devotion. And their magic is too quickly seen and confirmed, immediately sweeping up the main trio of kids into the core of the story.

  The casting of that trio, on the other hand, is excellent, Meg (Katie Stuart) in particular but Charles Wallace (David Dorfman) and Calvin (Gregory Smith) as well. The dad (Chris Potter), too, is good, as is the mom (Sarah-Jane Redmond). Alas, the relationship between Meg and her father -- and the strain the "abandonment" of Charles Wallace causes it -- is given short shrift, though. Which is a shame, because there's certainly time for it. Instead, the Meg/Calvin bits get padded, not to much effect. And while we get a feel for the key closeness between Meg and CW, there's not enough of that sort of genuine emotion through the rest of the show.

  Not sure why Sandy and Denys are suddenly so much younger ... heck, they don't look much older than CW.

  For that matter, why did Drs. Alex and Kate Murry get renamed to Jack and Dana? Odd.

• There's a bit too much sfx wonderment. Not that it doesn't look glorious in places (and awful in others), but there are times when it seems that's more the point of what's going on than it being a side-light of the story. And there's way too much stuff of that sort added, seemingly to either pad the story or make it more fantastical -- the "glow-worms," the "fire-fruit," stuff like that. Not to mention the over-long (and odd) tessering sequences, and the "killer sand-storm" when they arrive at Camazotz. A straightforward rendition as written by L'Engle would be fantastic enough.

  Granted -- a lot of the book deals with stuff that wouldn't be easy to visualize -- and a lot of internal perceptions and dialogs. But the bits added act more like chrome on a car and less like steel -- pretty to look at, but not really what you're trying to buy.

• The music (Patric Caird and Jeff Danna) was a mixed bag -- too melodramatic too often, but occasionally sweeping and uplifting at appropriate moments.

• The Camazotz stuff isn't bad -- but, again, there's a lot of padding (the pursuit within the CENTRAL Central Intelligence building, etc.).

• The Man with the Red Eyes (Kyle Secor) ... ehn. Smarmy. Somehow all the less threatening for coming off as a used car salesman. He's seductive the way "Q" was -- and equally obvious. Far less creepy than the much lower-key character in the book.

• The L'Engle books almost always have a strong religious theme -- not Bible-thumping by any means, but akin to what you find in Lewis's Narnia books. Alas, the religious serial numbers were well and truly filed off this production. For example, the singing of the creatures on Uriel goes from being translated by Charles Walace as a paraphrase of Psalm 96 ("Sing unto to the Lord a new song"), to simply being about "joy." The list of great warriors against the darkness no longer includes "Jesus." Mrs Which quotes Scripture but once (though her quotations in general are much curtailed). And the whole idea of the Black Area being evil is quickly stated once, then sort of dropped. It's a threat, certainly, and a Not Nice Thing, but the moral clarity of the original book is pushed aside for something perhaps more palatable to audiences (and potential school district purchasing agents).

• The big climactic scene -- perhaps of necessity -- is changed from an internal conflict to a somewhat cheesy sfx extravaganza, complete with lots of pyrotechnics. And while I understand why perhaps it had to be altered from the mental and emotional between Meg and IT and Charles Wallace that was in the book, the alteration becomes a mere parlor trick, something you might have seen in Serling's Twilight Zone or a James Kirk "cunning plan" to defeat the Bad Guy. It's way, way, way too obviously labored and blatant, and comes complete with Meg making (gack) a little speech to the denizens of Camazotz, who can now, strangely, all play basketball like pros.

  And, of course, evil (or whatever you choose to call ugly, darkness-producing brain-thingy worms) is not only fought back for the moment, but destroyed. Huh? Oh, wait, I guess it hasn't been destroyed. But it sure looked that way for a bit.

  "And we all lived pretty much happily ever after." Huh? Never mind that there are another three or four books about the Murry-O'Keefe family ...

In all, AWiT (the Disney rendition) is more of a punched-up adventure than an personal or spiritual odyssey, And it's too shallow and too giltzy and too maudlin to really do justice to the original. Indeed, were I still a teacher and had the book in my curriculum (as I did, Back in the Day), I wouldn't include this flick to extend the lesson.

Read the book instead. Please.

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