Tomorrowland
Directed by: Brad Bird
Written by: Damon Lindelof and Brad Bird
Starring: George Clooney, Hugh Laurie, Britt Robertson, Raffey Cassidy, Tim McGraw, Kathryn Hahn, Keegan-Michael Key, Thomas Robinson, Pierce Gagnon
Action/Adventure/Mystery/Sci-Fi - 130 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 21 May 2015
Written by: Damon Lindelof and Brad Bird
Starring: George Clooney, Hugh Laurie, Britt Robertson, Raffey Cassidy, Tim McGraw, Kathryn Hahn, Keegan-Michael Key, Thomas Robinson, Pierce Gagnon
Action/Adventure/Mystery/Sci-Fi - 130 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 21 May 2015
There is a moment well into Tomorrowland where George Clooney finally looks at the main character and yells, “Can't you just be amazed and move on?” Yes! Thank you! There is only so much, “Wow” and “What’s this” a human being can endure in a film before tiresome slides over into irritating. Despite the misleading title, Tomorrowland is not about the future, it is about the present but in an alternate dimension where the best and brightest of us sneak away so they can work with the other intellectual elite without the distraction of workaday Plant Earth red tape. Yawn. All the gee whiz special effects in the world cannot make up for the muddled story, over the top ‘things go boom’, underwhelming villain, and far too many screamed exclamation points.
Walt Disney was fascinated by the future. He coveted ideas and books about what future urban planning and cities would look like and how humans would function within them. Disney designed EPCOT, the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, and the Tomorrowland zone within his Disney theme parks to explore these ideas and present them to the masses more intrigued by his cartoon mouse character. Films have been made before based on Disney theme park rides, The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, and Tomorrowland has even been mocked as recently as 2013 with the odd indie Escape from Tomorrow. Now, Disney serves us a movie based on their Tomorrow zone and good grief it could have used some re-writes yesterday.
Walt Disney was fascinated by the future. He coveted ideas and books about what future urban planning and cities would look like and how humans would function within them. Disney designed EPCOT, the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, and the Tomorrowland zone within his Disney theme parks to explore these ideas and present them to the masses more intrigued by his cartoon mouse character. Films have been made before based on Disney theme park rides, The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, and Tomorrowland has even been mocked as recently as 2013 with the odd indie Escape from Tomorrow. Now, Disney serves us a movie based on their Tomorrow zone and good grief it could have used some re-writes yesterday.
Our plucky and obstinate protagonist, Casey (Britt Robertson), suffers through a classroom montage of how the world is going to end. Climate change, famine, resource scarcity, you name it, this is just a different version of the “we’re doomed” montage from the beginning of Pleasantville (1998). Casey wants to know more than what the problems are, she wants to solve them. This marks her as a Tomorrowland candidate in Athena’s eyes, a Tomorrowland recruiter. Athena (Raffey Cassidy) gives pins and instructions to the worthy on how to get to Tomorrowland; it is far more involved than “second star to the right and straight on till morning.”
The rare moments the audience enjoys roaming around Tomorrowland are the film’s best. Impossibly high towers and skyscrapers dominate the horizon, rockets and spaceships dart toward distant stars, and hovering monorails move faster and more efficient than the sleekest bullet train. There is even a fascinating swimming pool where you dive into multiple layers of water, then, back into the air, and then water again. Bravo. Too bad we get a functioning Tomorrowland only briefly in haphazard spurts. The rest of the time, Casey is either yelling disbelief at the other worldly events around here or screaming at someone else to take her to Tomorrowland. Just stop yelling already, be amazed, and move on.
Frank Walker (Clooney, 2014's The Monuments Men) recognizes our pain. Recruited to Tomorrowland as a young boy and later exiled, Frank, like the rest of us, are just waiting for the end; however, Frank is waiting for the end of the world. He has an algorithm and a countdown clock showing the exact moment the world will end. Fortunately for him, Casey just might be able to do something about that 100% to bring it down. Unfortunately for them both, homicidal robots are on their tail trying to kill them because, well, just because they are. I am not exactly sure why they are so eager to kill Casey and Frank.
Tomorrowland as a whole is riddled with plot holes and motivations left unsaid. Do all the folks who go to Tomorrowland to invent and explore build things to send back to Earth? Are they helping Earth? Are they just playing with their chemistry sets and making Tomorrowland a better place at the expense of Earth? If there are answers to these questions, the narrative opts to leave them out. The big reveal about why the Earth is going to end is also as nebulous as these questions. Not to give anything away, but it’s a bad feelings beam or something? I have so many questions I feel like Casey, but at least I’m not screaming my head off about them.
We were all shocked when Disney was able to pull off a great film about one of their theme park rides, well, at least the first Pirates film was enjoyable. They do not succeed with their attempt to spin off one of their park sections. It looks interesting at times with an Eiffel Tower scene to enjoy and that brief glimpse of that swimming pool contraption, but these are merely brief parts of an unpleasant whole. There is also an eyebrow raising climactic speech where the bad guy rails on about greedy corporations and selfish people. Disney is the ultimate multi-national corporation ensuring generation after generation learns to spend their money on the mouse. I assume plenty of execs read the script and crossed their fingers the audience would just enjoy the gleaming tall buildings and not make certain connections to the behemoth behind the curtain.
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