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.

Review: Delivery Man

by Trevor Kirkendall

★½

It’s no surprise that Hollywood studios seem to have a shortage of original ideas lately. They continue to remake successful movies from previous decades and give sequels to films that don’t deserve it. And would you believe that they’re running out of movies to remake? When the remake pool starts to dry, they look to foreign language films that the American public hasn’t seen and doesn’t know about. One such remake is “Starbuck”, an award winning film from Canada that has been remade (by its original director) into “Delivery Man”, a starring vehicle for Vince Vaughn. Despite the source material being from a different country, the results are still the same.

David Wozniak (Vince Vaughn) is a self described incompetent delivery truck driver. He works with his father Mikolaj (Andrzej Blumenfeld) and his brothers Victor (Simon Delaney) and Aleksy (Bobby Moynihan) at a family run meat shop in New York City. He’s in a massive amount of debt to the mob or something (it’s never really fully explained; they just pop up whenever the plot needs them to cause a disturbance). He’s in a relationship with a police officer, Emma (Cobie Sumlders), that doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. Then she springs the news on him that she’s pregnant. Emma will allow David to be the baby’s father if he straightens up his act.

David thinks he’s ready to be a dad, but he’s not sure. Suddenly he’s blindsided with a visit by an attorney for a fertility clinic where he donated sperm around 20 years ago. He donated almost 700 times in a four year time span. The clinic mistakenly gave his specimens to everyone who passed through. Therefore, he’s the biological father of 533 kids, 142 of whom are suing the clinic to find out his identity. He donated anonymously under the name Starbuck, so these kids don’t know who he is. The clinic’s attorney leaves him a sealed envelope containing profiles of all 142 kids.

David’s best friend, and non-practicing attorney, Brett (Chris Pratt) advises him to fight this so that he can remain anonymous. Brett also tells David not to look inside the envelope. David does anyway and starts tracking these kids down. One is a barista aspiring to be an actor (Jack Reynor), one is a street musician (Dave Patten) and one is heroin addict trying to turn her life around (Britt Robertson). Then there’s Viggo (Adam Chanler-Berat) who sees David hanging around all these kids and figures out who he is.

“Delivery Man” is 103 minutes of one awkward situation after another and none of it is satisfying, enjoyable or humorous. In fact, many moments are downright painful. You know those awkward moments I’m talking about; the ones that form the basic plot structure of just about every sitcom on television. You have a guy standing there in the middle of the room surrounded by people he’s been lying to for the entire episode. Now he has to talk his way out of the lies he’s told to them, but everything he says contradicts something he said earlier. The people press him for more information and he becomes visibly distraught until he buckles under pressure. Sure, you laugh because it’s awkward, not because it’s funny. You’re left with that knot in your stomach because you’ve been in a similar situation, just not as embellished. But the episode is only 20 minutes and easily forgettable. But “Delivery Man” leaves you with that awkward situation for almost the entire duration. That’s five sitcoms back-to-back.

To be fair, the screenplay does offer up a few moments of relief that bring the film into a more dramatic tone. David does go through some soul searching and grows up in the process. His growth is forced and not genuine. A lot of it happens due to coincidence which is a cheap ploy to move the story along. At least he does change, which is what you want to see. Writer/director Ken Scott adapted this film from his original movie “Starbuck” which I never saw. But I have to assume it’s not filled with the typical Hollywood clichés that flood this version.  Take out all the generic things you’ve come to expect from a typical comedy and this might have been decent.

I’ll give some credit to Vince Vaughn. He plays this role a little differently than his typical comedic roles. He doesn’t act so neurotic and high strung at all times, and his dialogue is clear and slow rather than that high speed stutter he’s known for. Sure, he slides into it from time to time, but he doesn’t base his entire character on that. Had he played it like that, he would have come across as the typical “Swingers” Vince Vaughn which has already worn out its welcome. Here, he actually plays into the more complex subtexts and brings out a genuine character. He’s done a couple dramatic roles before (like his small role in Sean Penn’s masterful “Into the Wild”) so I know he’s capable of finding a character. It doesn’t surprise me he pulled this off.

Unfortunately, “Delivery Man” is a mess from beginning to end, littered with coincidence and clichés that destroy almost every movie that comes out of a Hollywood studio’s story department. The story here is good, but it just seems like it was dumbed  down for mainstream viewing. It seems like it was tailor made to fit Vaughn’s shtick, and then he didn’t even play it that way. I’d like to think the moviegoing public doesn’t need simplified plot lines to be understood or to be relatable. Apparently Hollywood disagrees with me since they keep releasing these cliché riddled movies week in and week out.