If you read multiple reviews of A Wrinkle In Time in late February, it would have been hard to miss a theme that popped up in many of them: that, for good or ill, this was a children’s movie. That’s not a surprising conclusion to draw. Ava DuVernay’s movie is an adaptation of a dearly beloved work of young people’s literature by Madeleine L’Engle. More interesting is the subtext lingering behind these disclaimers. What do we mean when we say a movie is for children? Are we underestimating what kids are capable of handling, and what art aimed at children should strive to be?

“The best way to appreciate what [director Ava DuVernay] has done is in the company of a curious and eager 10-year-old (as I was fortunate enough to do). Or, if you’re really lucky, to locate that innocent, skeptical, openhearted version of yourself,” film critic A.O. Scott recommended in the New York Times.

My friend Chris Orr, the film critic for the Atlantic, advised, “See it with a child or — as DuVernay recommends — with a child’s wonder. Otherwise, probably don’t bother seeing it at all.” More enthusiastically, April Wolfe testified in the Village Voice that she was “transported by DuVernay’s adaptation to the mindset of my girlhood — embarrassing insecurities and all. This is not a cynic’s film. It is, instead, unabashedly emotional.”

Movies that enchant kids and train them to be lifelong consumers of art should be held to the highest standards

Though none of these critics comes out and says so directly, they each imply that watching a movie from a child’s perspective is to be freed from something that descends on us as adults. Maybe, remembering what it means to be a kid means setting aside concerns about politics and the state of the world — or, more positively, approaching those problems with self-confidence. Perhaps the implication is that we should just embrace the giddy images DuVernay put on screen without worrying too much about how they compare to all the spectacles we’ve seen before. Or it could be that we’re supposed to do what plenty of adult fans have urged skeptical critics of their favourite shows and movies to do over the years: “stop overthinking” the work in question.

Whatever the implication, it was hard not to read reviews of A Wrinkle In Time and feel that some less-than-enthusiastic critics were invoking the childlike perspective as a subtle way to suggest the movie wasn’t very good using a supposedly separate set of standards for grownup art. But that supposes children are simpler and less discerning than adults — which seems awfully unfair.

In fact, the art that most effectively summons what it’s like to be a child explores the moments we discover that the world is more complicated than we once knew.

Pixar has thrived on this revelation: The Toy Story movies are about the prospect of abandonment or outliving your use; Finding Nemo and Finding Dory examine what it’s like to be exposed to the world without adult protection; Inside Out is a moving portrait of falling out of emotional equilibrium. Children’s classics — including Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House series, and Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn— endure in part because they recognise that children are not protected from disease, death, hunger, marital strife, violence and racism.

The movies aimed at adults that most successfully invoke the feeling of childhood are those that don’t shy away from difficulty. The rage Suzy (Kara Hayward) feels in Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom, and the resentment that Mason (Ellar Coltrane) feels toward his strict, and then increasingly abusive, stepfather in Richard Linklater’s Boyhood are electric, deeply felt and decidedly not cute or safe.

This is true of the best moments in A Wrinkle In Time, as well. The script’s constant flow of affirmations — of Meg Murry’s (Storm Reid) hair, her fortitude, her presence on the roster of Warriors of the Light — have dominated the conversation. But the more interesting scenes reveal how weak and unreliable adults can be. Whether it’s Meg’s brother, Charles Wallace (Deric McCabe) overhearing cruel gossip from the teachers at his school, or Meg rescuing her father (Chris Pine) only to realise he doesn’t know how long he’s been gone, much less how to save the universe, A Wrinkle In Time captures childhood most powerfully not in its candy-coloured flights of fantasy, but in its deeply human reckonings.

Of course, simply because art deals with difficult scenarios doesn’t automatically make it appropriate for children. On that score, it is interesting to contrast A Wrinkle In Time with Anderson’s Isle of Dogs. Isle of Dogs looks like a children’s movie: It’s made with stop-motion animation, the most important human character is 12 years old, and it features the most engaging talking dogs to grace a movie screen since Pixar’s Up. But for all its adorableness, Isle of Dogs is about political assassinations, government corruption and a plan to deport and then murder all the dogs from Megasaki City, a futuristic Japanese metropolis — all handled with Anderson’s signature combination of archness, impeccable style and painful emotion.

Any kid who could grasp that mix of tones and topics (and some certainly could) deserves better than to be told that “children’s movies” are simple. And just because many kids won’t be ready for Isle of Dogs yet doesn’t mean they should be stuck with soothing mush, or be expected to not notice stiff writing or flat ideas in the meantime. The truth is just the opposite: The movies and books that are going to enchant kids, introduce them to big ideas and train them to be lifelong consumers of art should be held to the highest standards.

— By arrangement with The Washington Post

Published in Dawn, ICON, May 6th, 2018