Review: Tomorrowland

by Trevor Kirkendall
★★½

Brad Bird is a filmmaker who has earned my respect by crafting such original content in the world of animated films such as “The Iron Giant,” “The Incredibles,” and “Ratatouille.” He stepped into live action features with enormously impressive franchise installment “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol.” I can’t think of too many filmmakers who have hit it out of the park with their first four feature films like Bird had done. This is why I had such high expectations for his latest film “Tomorrowland.” There’s no way a film directed by Bird that looked this magical could possibly be bad, right? But it was indeed good. Unfortunately, that’s the only adjective I can describe it as: good. Quite a bland and unimpressive word choice, right? Well, it is a little bland and not overly original, but it’s not a bad film. It’s just good.

Casey Newton (Britt Robertson) is an optimistic high school kid who doesn’t buy into all the doomsday scenarios (polar ice caps melting, upcoming nuclear holocausts, etc.) her teachers feed her on a daily basis. She thinks that if we act on it as a whole, we can stop these things from happening. She believes this so much that she doesn’t want to see NASA dismantle all their launch platforms, forcing the end of space exploration and having her father (Tim McGraw) lose his job. She breaks in to the launch facilities nightly in order to sabotage the cranes taking it apart. But then she’s caught and arrested.

Once she’s bailed out, she’s handed back her personal belongings including a weird looking pin. When she touches it, she’s magically transported to a fantastic futuristic looking world that she can’t get enough of. However, the pin’s abilities soon wear off, so she goes in search of where this mysterious pin came from. Her search leads her a young girl named Athena (Raffey Cassidy) who is from Tomorrowland, the mystical place Casey has seen. Athena urges Casey to find a man named Frank Walker (George Clooney) who was once kicked out. Together, the three must work together to get back to Tomorrowland in order to save it, and quite possibly the world at the same time.

That’s pretty vague, but I don’t want to ruin whatever surprise you might find here. “Tomorrowland” is a pretty fun movie, in a 1970s/80s Spielbergian sci-fi kind of way. Bird’s influence from Spielberg is on full display here. You’re taken to place that doesn’t exist in this world, and that’s something that’s always fun about going to the movies. There’s that certain childlike wonderment that Spielberg has always been known for. Although Casey is a bit older than Elliot was in “E.T.,” the two share similar qualities in their desire to know more about the unknown.

But this is the part where “Tomorrowland” fails to capitalize on a fantastic opportunity. Casey only catches a glimpse of Tomorrowland and then spends the remainder of the film trying to get back. So you end up spending most of this film – that looks to be very spectacular in terms of its vision and ambition – in our own world. Not that that’s a bad thing necessarily, but it’s probably not what you’re expecting to see. In 130 minutes of run time, it takes almost 60 for Clooney’s character to really appear, and even more time to get the excitement going. Sure, it has exciting moments running up to a climax, but there’s far too much set up happening here.

Bird would rather spend his time setting up the theme to his movie rather than actually wowing us with the visual aspect and an even move memorable story. I appreciate the story, of course, but there seems to be too much dedication on the exposition here. That entire plot pays off in the end, but in a slightly disappointing fashion: “Tomorrowland” uses all that plot and all that backstory to load up a 10-ton hammer of a theme and smack you right in the face with it. There’s absolutely no subtlety in the message this film is trying to get across to its audience. It’s the type of message I remember hearing all my teachers in elementary school try to convey every Earth Day. Which makes sense, since this film is probably geared toward a young crowd.

But I can’t appreciate the theme of the film when it’s delivered in such an obvious way where it almost assumes the audience isn’t smart enough to see what the movie is trying to say. The film could have used a little trimming of the exposition and this theme still could have some across just fine. I don’t have an issue with the stance the film is trying to take, but it’s just too much and delivered in a very heavy-handed fashion.

Again I’ll say that Brad Bird is a filmmaker who has earned enough respect over his career for me to take notice of whatever movie he’s releasing. I just have such a hard time with this one because of how obvious it is that Disney is trying to nonchalantly sneak in a social message here. I can’t see that being Bird’s idea because he’s never shown that side in any of his other work. But that aside, “Tomorrowland” is still a very fun movie; it just takes a little bit of time to get going. I expected more from it, but what we get is still a film that has a lot to enjoy. Kids should like, and it’s easy to follow and understand. It just won’t be as memorable as some of Bird’s other work. I’ll probably have forgotten about it by this time next week.