**
Shapeless TV adaptation of Madeleine L'Engle's novel about two kids, helped along by a friend and three strange old women, who travel to distant planets in search of their missing father, a brilliant scientist who disappeared a year earlier while working on a top secret project for the government. Manages to turn L'Engle's most emotionally powerful scene, the ending, into an action sequence, after which the film simply doesn't know when to quit. Not surprisingly, the film is neither as horrific as the novel nor does it contain any of the author's nods to Christianity. With unimpressive special effects and a kind of galactic medium who gets her kicks by using her crystal ball to watch live versions of America's Funniest Home Videos. Not that it matters, but in an interview with Newsweek's Melinda Henneberger, L'Engle herself denounced the film, saying, "I expected it to be bad, and it is." (She also dismissed J. K. Rowling's first Harry Potter book as "a nice story but [with] nothing underneath it.") This film stars Katie Stuart, Gregory Smith, and David Dorfman as the three kids, and Alfre Woodard, Kate Nelligan, and Alison Elliott as the old women.
Shapeless TV adaptation of Madeleine L'Engle's novel about two kids, helped along by a friend and three strange old women, who travel to distant planets in search of their missing father, a brilliant scientist who disappeared a year earlier while working on a top secret project for the government. Manages to turn L'Engle's most emotionally powerful scene, the ending, into an action sequence, after which the film simply doesn't know when to quit. Not surprisingly, the film is neither as horrific as the novel nor does it contain any of the author's nods to Christianity. With unimpressive special effects and a kind of galactic medium who gets her kicks by using her crystal ball to watch live versions of America's Funniest Home Videos. Not that it matters, but in an interview with Newsweek's Melinda Henneberger, L'Engle herself denounced the film, saying, "I expected it to be bad, and it is." (She also dismissed J. K. Rowling's first Harry Potter book as "a nice story but [with] nothing underneath it.") This film stars Katie Stuart, Gregory Smith, and David Dorfman as the three kids, and Alfre Woodard, Kate Nelligan, and Alison Elliott as the old women.