A young scientist disappears, leaving behind a wife and two kids. Years later, his daughter embarks on a magical journey--with the help of some celestial fairy godmothers--to rescue him from the far reaches of outer space. That's the makings of a fantastic fantasy story, especially considering the impact and cultural importance of the 1962 Madeleine L'Engle novel on which A Wrinkle in Time is based. But it winds up being wasted potential.

The stars include Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, Mindy Kaling, Chris Pine, and the young but talented Storm Reid, and with the budget and creativity on display, it seems Disney gave director Ava DuVernay the tools to make something special. But A Wrinkle In Time is a disaster of galactic proportions, a two-hour jumble that sometimes borders on incoherent while striving for emotional greatness.

Reid stars as Meg Murry, who's become a different person in the four years since her father (Pine) disappeared, acting out in school as her grades continuously drop. Her smart but troublesome adopted younger brother, played by Deric McCabe, is for some reason always referred to by his full name, "Charles Wallace." He's never addressed by a nickname or anything shorter, and with how often he runs off or disappears, multiple characters spend long scenes simply yelling his name out loud. By the final act, it turns grating.

Meg's mother, played by Gugu Mbatha-Raw, spends most of her time in flashbacks to before her husband's disappearance, when she and Mr. Murry worked enthusiastically together on pseudo-science junk about "tesseracts" and "finding the right brain frequency." Yet the movie never spends a single second actually explaining what a tesseract is or how it lets you leap across the universe using only your mind, despite hanging the entire premise and plot on it.

One day, three mysterious beings appear in and around the Murrys' house: Witherspoon's Mrs. Whatsit, Kaling's Mrs. Who, and Oprah's Mrs. Which. They claim to be galactic warriors drawn there by Meg's strong need to find her dad. Adorned with dazzling quantities of fabulous glitter and sparkles, "the Misses" are the best thing in the movie, although Kaling almost never speaks except in brief, non sequitur quotes from Shakespeare and Hamilton (yes, the musical). Even Giant Goddess Oprah, who literally towers above the other characters in early scenes (she's actually the size of a house), can't save A Wrinkle in Time--disappointing, but unsurprising, given she's forced to administer sage lines like this one: "Become one with the universe, and yourself."

The Misses drag Meg and Charles Wallace--plus their neighbor Calvin (Levi Miller), who literally wanders up to them on the street and hangs around for the rest of the movie despite having no purpose whatsoever--across the universe in search of their dad. What that effectively means is they travel to two different environments made entirely of awful-looking CG. In one exotic locale, Witherspoon's character transforms into a whale-sized half-cabbage, half-manta ray monstrosity and the kids ride on her back for no reason until one falls off, while the other consists entirely of Zach Galifianakis doing his best as a wise man in a cave filled with bad metaphors and worse CG (Meg strives for mental equilibrium while balancing on silly-looking seesaw crystals--get it?).

That's all followed by an interminable final act that can best be described as a mixture of a cheesy disaster movie with the ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey or The Matrix Reloaded, only it makes less sense. Plot twists and turns seem completely random; events simply happen to and around the characters without a shred of agency or ability on their parts.

B-plots relating to characters back on earth rear their heads in brief flashes and are never mentioned again. The funny Michael Peña shows up for a few minutes, though who he is or why he's there is never explained. Fortuitous accidents caused by coincidence and luck get attributed to Meg, who happily takes credit while not really doing anything at all. The Misses, in their well-meaning urgency to bolster Meg's meager self esteem, compare her directly to figures like Gandhi and Nelson Mandela--which is simultaneously reductive to them, condescending to Meg (and to audiences), and vaguely offensive.

Meg is, admittedly, a relatable and likable protagonist. Her struggles to fit in and deal with bullies at school after the tragedy of her father's disappearance ring true, even though A Wrinkle in Time spends just a scant few minutes grounded in the real world. There's a small part of this movie that feels like a meaningful fable about coping with grief, but it's quickly and mercilessly eclipsed by a fairy tale fever dream that jumps from one nonsense beat to the next without time for anything resembling actual emotion, growth, or story.

Charles Wallace, meanwhile, takes the "precocious child who's wise beyond his years" trope to new levels of caricature, leading the way on various misadventures with a smug smile and squeaky proclamations that often verge on unintelligible. One of the movie's only genuine-feeling emotional beats comes late in the movie, when a character earnestly insists they have to leave Charles Wallace behind on the other side of the galaxy if there's to be any hope of survival. If only.

A Wrinkle in Time doesn't even look or sound good. The CG is unabashedly ugly; even mundane locations like the Murrys' backyard appear unreal and uncanny. The camera stays way too close to the action, with endless tight shots somehow making wide open fields and sky-soaring adventures feel itchingly claustrophobic. A truly weird number of scenes start with the camera so close on Meg's face--usually after another brain-powered "tesser" teleportation across the galaxy--that you expect the actress to bump her face on the lens as she picks herself up off the ground.

There's hardly a quiet moment in the whole movie. Every scene is underscored by loud, distracting music, and the vocals from pop songs often drown out characters' dialogue as various voices compete for decibels. Many scenes are punctuated by bad voice overs, the added dialogue appearing conspicuously when characters' faces are just out of the shot in failed attempts to cover it up. The effect overall is like several meandering music videos stitched together, robbing audiences of any opportunities that might have existed to form a genuine bond or actual emotional link with the events on the screen. You're told exactly how to feel with every frame, although the results are mostly boredom and confusion.

A Wrinkle In Time is a never-ending series of random events with a false veneer of deep emotions, an entire movie made up of only the surreal time-traveling climax of Interstellar, with none of the parts of the rest of that movie that actually seemed to make sense. It's unabashed and unwavering in its conviction that it has Something Important To Say, and granted, its heart is in the right place. Everyone is special, we should love ourselves and be kind to one another, even the meanest bullies really just need a hug. And yes, of course, the answer is love--and it was inside you all along.

But without a single real moment of levity or self-awareness, A Wrinkle In Time is just self-serious and noisy. Even fairy tales need to follow some internal logic and rules, and A Wrinkle in Time has none. It's all fluff, zero substance, and a total waste of time.