A love letter to depressed black girls.
This may be a very popular book - It's not one I ever read personally - but I have heard how difficult it is to make a movie out of. There was a previous attempt by Disney in the early 2000's that didn't do so hot.
As a black, female film critic, I say go ahead.
No one can improve without honest, thoughtful, helpful criticism. If you're being vitriolic to be a jerk, that's your cue to shut up.
I'm saying this a lot this year, but it felt like a video game. If Loving Vincent was a RPG, this is an open world adventure game. it's a mostly beautiful movie, but there are times where you can see just how poor a job whoever Disney is hiring to do their CGI is these days, between this and Ragnarok.
Let's get this out of the way - The diverse casting? Not the problem. Casting people who overshadow the roles is, and with characters like the Misses - Who seem like metaphysical representations of concepts instead of people - You just see women in interesting costumes point children in the direction of the goal.
I recall reading a comment saying that this movie should have leaned heavily into the (alleged) metaphysics and mysticism of the novel, and used more abstract concepts, eschewing people entirely.
How would it work? I don't know, but it would certainly be more interesting and probably make more sense.
As it stands now, the film makes sense sometimes, but around the 3/4ths mark, it just can't hold on to the sense anymore, and it tosses it away right around the point Charles Wallace meets Micheal Peña on the beach.
That was after a walk through a suburb turned into a music video blasting Demi Lovato.
(No, it does not make sense in context.)
I related very strongly to Meg. People have no sympathy for black girls. And many people have zero idea how to deal with grief and depression.
This movie is the most sympathetic I've seen toward my demographic. Even with all it's faults. I cried a lot watching this just because of how nicely they treated Meg.
Done properly, this movie really could have encouraged people to show more empathy and understanding to black girls.
Just because the film failed on a storytelling front doesn't mean it failed with humanizing a very ignored demographic.
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