4DX Review – A Wrinkle in Time

This is a *mostly* spoiler-free review of A Wrinkle in Time in 4DX format. This isn’t designed to a be a review of the movie as much is it’s a review of the 4DX experience for this movie.

A Wrinkle in Time is Disney’s latest big-budget fantasy film.  With beautiful visuals and a wholesome good versus evil storyline, the movie will surely be in regular rotation on television, but these visuals are best seen on the big screen.

The movie opens with a cloud filled flying scene where the fans are used, but the smoke that could’ve sold the scene was missing. This seemed to be a theme throughout the film. The wind, water, and motion seats were used perfectly, but many of the other effects felt like afterthoughts if thought of at all.

The rumble effect in the seats was used with the bass of the music similar to how Black Panther did, but unlike Black Panther here the score just didn’t have enough bass to warrant such an effect. By far the best use of an effect was the motion seats. Unlike many action films here the seats weren’t rough and didn’t really move with the motion on the screen, instead, here they were used to enhance the emotional draw of the story. In more sensitive scenes the seats would tilt inward, drawing you into the scene.

Similar to Tomorrowland, another sci-fi based big-budget Disney film, A Wrinkle in Time has many scenes with wide vistas of fields. The fans in the theater made these scenes even more convincing. The smoke effects were used but not nearly enough as they could’ve been. The leg ticklers were only used a few times, but where used they were timed just right for the scene. Big storm scenes and a volcano like a scene meant the strobe lights got well used, almost to an annoyance but with so few other effects being used it feels wrong complaining about an effect being used too often.

Despite this being a sci-fi film, the genre that usually allows 4DX to shine, here the effects just weren’t enough to put this film in the upper echelon of 4DX films. It falls in the middle, not in the lower category of films where the effects distract from the viewing experience, such as with Kong, but the lack of variety in the effects mixed with the generic use of what effects, where used, make A Wrinkle in Time a less than memorable 4DX experience.

The visuals are the best part so it might be best to skip the 4DX and instead just take in this film on the big screen like IMAX.

-Review Summary-

• Use of 4DX Effects- 2 out of 4
• Movie Overall- 3 out of 4

Other 4DX Reviews

• Black Panther
• Maze Runner: The Death Cure
• Coco
• Interview with June Hyuk Yu- Sr. Manager, Brand Marketing Team at CJ4Dplex