The Scream XXX Parody Pornexcitement leading up to Ava DuVernay's A Wrinkle in Timemay have become slightly tinged with dread in the past few weeks, as suspicion started to creep in that it wouldn't live up to expectations.

Critics are finally allowed to share their thoughts on the film, which are mostly as expected; it's a visually stunning adaptation that struggles to live up to the source material. Still, it has heart. Mashable's Angie Han called it "a flawed film that entreats us to love flawed things, up to and including our very own selves."

For more reviews of A Wrinkle in Time, read on.

Mrs. Who, Mrs. Which, and Mrs. Whatsit

Todd McCarthy, The Hollywood Reporter:

The three “Mrs.” characters, who change makeup and wardrobe styles incessantly, are unequally balanced: Witherspoon has far more dialogue and screen time than the others and before long becomes annoyingly overbearing; Winfrey kind of floats through much of it making banal pronouncements, such as, “If we do not act soon, darkness will fall across the universe”; and Kaling has unfairly little to say or do.

Amy Nicholson, The Guardian:

Winfrey alights in Meg and Charles Wallace’s backyard as though astrologically assured that she’s the star of the film. Twice the size of everyone else and with her hair curled into an interplanetary fleur de lis, she looms and bobs and radiates love upon all the lesser beings onscreen and in seats. In one scene, a flying Charles Wallace stretches out a small hand to stroke Winfrey’s cheek. It feels like the most sincere shot in the movie.

Kevin Fallon, The Daily Beast:

As Mrs. Whatsit, the youngest of the Mrs., Witherspoon is subtly snarky and uncouth, a hoot who relishes every second spent draped in costume designer Paco Delgado’s celestial couture. Kaling’s Mrs. Who, whose wisdom is expressed solely in philosophical maxims, radiates regal earnestness and care. And then there’s Oprah, Winfrey’s Mrs. Which, looming large above everyone as a shining beam of light, a guiding presence watching over and leading us all. (Could the casting be more perfect?)

Are the kids all right?

Todd McCarthy, The Hollywood Reporter:

The film is most tolerable when it remains centered on the three kids, their bickering and their underlying “there for you” inter-dependency. Meg is appealing because you know that behind her reticence lies a smart and resourceful girl who will one day be able to fully assert herself without having to be told every five minutes that, “You just have to have faith in who you are.” Calvin remains too blandly “nice” to be an interesting character but fills the bill as eye candy for younger teen girls, while Charles Wallace is, by the film's modest standards, something of a hoot as the preternaturally sharpest kid in the neighborhood, be it on Earth or elsewhere.

Amy Nicholson, The Guardian:

DuVernay’s updated L’Engle is totally for kids...However, this Wrinkle in Timedoesn’t seem made for the kind of actual, human children who dogeared the five-paperback series with playground-grimy nails muttering the words “tesseract” and “liverwurst” to themselves like mysterious incantations. The film is tentative and over-protective, as though it’s terrified that a story empowering kids to help good battle evil could give someone a nightmare. It reduces the whole universe to one girl’s self-esteem.

Peter Debruge, Variety:

DuVernay’s choice of who should play Charles Wallace seems questionable at first — if only because McCabe’s child-actorly way of playing to the camera makes the lip-smacking Welch’s Grape Juice girls look naturalistic by comparison. And yet, this being fantasy, who’s to say such precocity is out of place? Except, as readers will anticipate, something major happens to Charles Wallace that appears to be so far outside of McCabe’s range that the movie all but derails during what’s meant to be its climactic stretch.

Kevin Fallon, The Daily Beast:

It’s a film in which the lead is a teenage, biracial girl, one with un-self-conscious interest in and aptitude for science and math, who goes on a journey to embrace the parts of her she’s been told by society to ignore or demean, and uses those very qualities as weapons to save the day. If DuVernay occasionally lingers the camera a beat or two longer than we’re used to on images of Storm Reid as Meg on her path to victory, it’s because she’s luxuriating in their meaning, lavishing those images on the young people who will be watching.

The promised visuals

Todd McCarthy, The Hollywood Reporter:

after impressing so with her earlier work both in features and documentaries, what's disconcerting here is DuVernay's inability to forge a strong or supple visual style. Most scenes are dominated by far too much cutting between shots that bear no spatial relationships to one another, to the point where the compositions look arbitrary; it all seems manufactured rather than crafted, with scenes played and over-edited to visually busy but indifferent effect.

Peter Debruge, Variety:

Finding their father may be the kids’ driving goal in the film, but it’s the inter-dimensional tourism that makes their mission worthwhile. The first planet they come to is inhabited by sentient plant life which have mastered the secrets of levitation and which “speak color” (a fun idea somewhat unsatisfyingly explained here). With emerald-green fields and crystal water as far as the eye can see, this world is home to Mrs. Whatsit, who makes a transformation we haven’t seen before, whisking them away on a unique kind of magic carpet ride.

Laura Prudom, IGN:

What’s most frustrating about the whole endeavor is that when it works, A Wrinkle in Time soars -- between its vibrant alien vistas, eye-popping costumes, and sweeping soundtrack, it’s an unabashed sensory overload, illustrating DuVernay’s eye for details.While the director is only the third woman in movie history to helm a film with a budget in excess of $100 million (following Kathryn Bigelow and Patty Jenkins), DuVernay handles the aesthetics of her blockbuster debut with confidence and flair, making the heavy-lifting of worldbuilding seem effortless, even if the same can’t be said for the uneven pacing.

A Wrinkle in Time releases in theaters March 9.