Review: ‘Tomorrowland’

“Tomorrowland” arrived with much promise – a wholly original sci-fi film starring George Clooney and more importantly developed by a wondrous filmmaker by the name of Brad Bird, he of “The Iron Giant” and “The Incredibles” fame. His second live-action film after the hugely entertaining “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol,” this was supposed to be the antithesis to the same old, same old, an antidote to the parade of boring installments of mega franchises that regularly populate the multiplexes this time of year (and now seemingly year round). Tired of comic book movies and film adaptations of old television shows and remakes of movies that were perfectly fine to begin with? Then “Tomorrowland” is supposed to be your answer. So why did it just land with the most resounding of thuds?

“Tomorrowland” is the story of Casey Newton (Britt Robertson), who lives in Cape Canaveral, Florida, and is trying her best to fight against the dismantling of the space program which employed her father for many years and which inspired her long ago to look up at a starry night with wonder. This determination and hopeless optimism gets her on the short list of people who are granted access to Tomorrowland, a sort of alternate dimension place designed by geniuses and meant for society’s best and brightest, a place for them to experiment and develop their radical ideas and attempt to make the world a better place. She spends a short amount of time in Tomorrowland, which looks mostly like The Airport of The Future, and then spends most of the rest of the movie trying to get back there. In order to get back, she is introduced to Frank (George Clooney), who was a citizen of Tomorrowland when it was first conceived, but found himself excommunicated from the place for reasons not made entirely clear outside of “ideological differences.” Frank is a total grump, but he reluctantly agrees to help Casey go back to Tomorrowland in an attempt to “save the world.”

Does that come across as a little confusing? Because that paragraph sums up about two-thirds of this movie at least, which starts as a rip-roaring good time full of mystery and wonder, but then just keeps on going and going with more characters and side trips that take us further and further from Tomorrowland. The story makes sense as you watch it unfold, it just takes a whole to do so, and they take their sweet time getting us back to Tomorrowland. Meanwhile, from the very beginning, “Tomorrowland” is filled with characters proclaiming their theories about the importance of inspiration and how “fun” has a place in the pantheon of reasons for creating something new, and how optimism and hope for the future have been replaced with a sense of doom and gloom as well as straight up pessimism for what the future holds. By the time the movie nears the end, we have a character proclaiming how we are doomed as a species because we see the signs of our imminent demise in the form of climate change and self-genocide and instead of correcting our mistakes we turn these problems into entertainment to be feasted upon by the masses, hence causing a feedback loop of bad juju. For a movie about optimism for the future, it sure spends a lot of time focusing on gloomy despair.

And for a movie being about invention and imagination, it spends a lot of time lecturing. Instead of showing us the benefits of the wide-eyed hope and getting across a real sense of euphoria stemming from the use of unbridled imagination, we get bogged down with characters spending minutes on end talking about their worldly viewpoints and how humans are causing their own demise, and we get speeches about the importance of being a creator of hope. There are exactly two scenes in which different characters enter Tomorrowland for the first time, and they look around in wide-eyed wonder at the world before them, taking it all in with the excitement of a child going to a theme park for the first time. The rest of this movie totally drops this sense of awe and amazement, and boy oh boy did it need more of that, because at 2 hours and 10 minutes this movie ends up feeling like a presentation more concerned with getting across a message than with being entertaining.

And this is a damn shame because as it is, “Tomorrowland” does have an earnest and interesting message, one that is not reflected in much of our popular art these days, and once can feel Brad Bird and company behind this message, actually meaning it thoroughly, very much being concerned with how people view our current world as well as our possible future. And despite this being a Disney movie based on a section of their theme parks (which somehow feels even MORE vapid than basing a movie on a theme park ride), it still comes across as one of the most original pieces of multi-million dollar entertainment to be produced in a long time. But just because it is original doesn’t mean it will be automatically good. And while there is plenty to like about this movie – from the agreeable performers to the production design to Brad’s excellent sense of action film making – “Tomorrowland” is mostly a disappointment, as it is kind of boring, definitely long winded, and surprisingly lifeless.