On a weekend where “everybody” is flocking to Twilight II, I looked at an overlooked TV film from 2004, Disney’s “A Wrinkle in Time”, directed by John Kent Harrison, based on the children’s novel by Madeleine L’Engle.
A physicist Jack Murry (Chris Potter) dematerializes while experimenting with extra dimensions, along with an assistant Hank. The son and daughter, along with a neighborly teen Calvin O’Keefe (played by a wholesome Gregory Smith, then 20) go through some time warps, visiting two planets: the first green with sharp-top mountains like those in China and huge birds (probably a thick atmosphere), and then a polluted world Camazotz. Maybe the planets were inspired by the solar system in Frank Herbert’s "Dune" (a film in 1984). The kids are accompanied by three female “angels” (Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who and Mrs. Which).
The second planet is really pretty interesting conceptually. The sky is cloudy with soot and orange, hazy pollution. There are townhouses on a concrete street without yards, leading to a central headquarters surrounded by a circle of offices in a pinwheel. Inside the headquarters there are endless concrete passageways, and the aliens can put the kids (especially Calvin) out with their own kind of anesthesia. It’s a kind of hell, or perhaps southern California in the future, after a century of global warming. Kids can shoot hoops or ride skateboards when a cop tells them that the scheduled "hour" for them to do so has come (sounds like school).
There are other interesting concepts. The daughter gets detention for correcting her male science teacher in an early scene. Later, there is a script line “being equal doesn’t mean being the same.” A lot of the writing sounds metaphorical.
Gregory Smith's character Calvin has a basketball hoops flashback where he acts a bit like a superman (maybe an expansion of "Everwood"). In the DVD interview Smith mentions that Calvin, already an intern at the lab, gets involved in the search and rescue of the neighbor's dad out of a "compulsion." As far as I remember, Smith's characters in TV and movies are always wholesome.
The DVD is full screen (unfortunately), and comes from Dimension Films, which at the time was part of Disney (and the Weinstein Company).
Here is Walt Disney Studio UK’s official trailer for the upcoming (2010) “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time” with a very muscular Jake Gyllenhaal.
Check also a blog on this film trailer here.
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