.......... Bound by a shared destiny, a teen bursting with scientific curiosity and a former boy-genius inventor embark on a mission to unearth the secrets of a place somewhere in time and space that exists in their collective memory.
Director: Brad Bird
Writers: Damon Lindelof (screenplay), Brad Bird (screenplay) ...
Stars: George Clooney, Britt Robertson, Hugh Laurie
Storyline
Bound by a shared destiny, a bright, optimistic teen bursting with scientific curiosity and a former boy-genius inventor jaded by disillusionment embark on a danger-filled mission to unearth the secrets of an enigmatic place somewhere in time and space that exists in their collective memory as "Tomorrowland."
Tomorrowland Movie Reviews
"More Like Tomorrowbland... Heh"
So Tomorrowland is the latest film by the autocratic organisation and future supreme overlords, Disney. With the creative genius behind The Iron Giant and the Incredibles at the helm, I must say I found the idea of a high concept Sci-Fi adventure directed by Brad Bird quite exciting to say the least, unfortunately I left the theatre feeling bittersweet.
Tomorrowland follows the story of plucky optimist and human, Casey Newton played by Britt Robertson, who stumbles upon an invitation to a fantastic world run by Hugh Laurie, which has scientifically flourished by shielding itself away from the rest of humanity. In her quest to find Tomorrowland Casey befriends grumpy genius Frank played by George Clooney and robotic robot, Athena, who is a robot.
While the film has a lot of great ideas, and shows a lot of promise early on, it's scattered story telling coupled with a complete lack of emotional punch in the end marks this as a slight misstep in Disney's recent renaissance.
Tomrrowland begins like so many other films nowadays, with a "this story all started back when" sequence. A trick often used instead of establishing character, it ignores that well known rule of thumb, Show don't tell. But here it's almost forgivable, almost. We get some decent character development later on, mostly from Frank and it gets things moving quickly. But wouldn't it be more interesting if we didn't see grumpy Frank until later. Leading us as the audience to wonder what happened to him, why he's gone from young, happy and hopeful to old, bitter and pessimistic. But instead we see grumpy Frank first, diminishing all sense of mystery in the audience. The reason I bring this up is A) Frank is by far our most interesting character and B) it perfectly illustrates many of Tomorrowland's problems, strange decisions that that are detrimental to the plot, pacing or development of characters. But we are treated to some of Tomorrowland's best bits early on too, redeeming it somewhat.
We get some fun back and fourth between our two main characters, which is done so well it makes me wonder why it wasn't used more often. And we also get a pretty spectacular visual spectacle when first being introduced to Tomorrowland itself, in the form of a jetpack sequence so fun, it instantly made me wonder why I have to drive home instead of fly.
So within the first five minutes we see the films strengths and weaknesses and the pattern in which it will repeat for the next 2 hours and 10 minutes. Fun, imaginative set piece followed by muddy, meandering story telling. The set pieces alone are enough to justify the price of admission especially if you're a big man-child like myself. A particular favourite of mine was a shoot out in a comic book store using ray guns, complete with Star Wars references (I wonder why they're present). And there are even some old school visuals for us classic Sci Fi nerds. They may look out of place to younger viewers but I definitely appreciated them.
Even the parts between the action are entertaining enough thanks to the interplay between our two leads. Athena on the other hand is a different story, there's always something that seems quite off with her delivery. She also happens to have a history with Frank, which culminates with a (spoiler alert) selfless sacrifice, but lacks any emotional punch because we have no reason to care about her character or her connection with Frank. When they do try to develop their relationship it makes some uncomfortable viewing thanks to Franks advanced age and Athena still looking ten years old.
We are however treated to some Hugh Laurie being wonderful at the climax of the film, he is given the unenviable task of delivering the heavy- handed message but he pulls it off, at least in my book. Although it could've been written into the script better, it is essentially Hugh Laurie telling us we're all dicks out of the blue, if it were anyone else I might've been offended. Now some people may find the message rather preachy but it is an amiable message and the film feels like it has the best of intentions. And then it ends, without much of a fanfare. There's some action, some fisticuffs but it's nowhere near as grand a payoff as it could of been considering the earlier action scenes, and the fact that the film had jetpacks in it.
In short Tomorrowland is by no means a bad film, but it's not quite good. It's both hard to get excited about and hard to hate, like tepid coffee, spongecake or Alan Titchmarsh. It'll more than likely just leave you feeling nothing at all as a result, except for an overwhelming need for a jetpack.
