Review: Tomorrowland

In 1964, a young boy attends the NY World’s Fair hoping to show off his jet-pack invention. He gets cruelly rejected by David Nix (Hugh Laurie), but young Athena (Raffey Cassidy) sympathises with the boy and slips him a special pin for something called Tomorrowland and tells him to take a ride. This takes the boy to a world called Tomorrowland, seemingly a futuristic world (or alternate dimension?) created out of great imagination and innovation. Cut to the present and young brainiac Casey (Britt Robertson) gets herself arrested for some mild misdemeanour. Whilst in jail she finds a Tomorrowland pin, and when she touches it she seemingly (and briefly) gets transported to Tomorrowland. However, the pin soon seems to lose its power. Intrigued and a little freaked out, she tries to get it working again, only to be set-upon by humanoid robots. She is rescued by Athena, who looks to have not aged a day since 1964. She is trying to recruit great young minds to help create the future. Together they try to track down Frank (George Clooney) the grown-up version of the little boy from 1964. He has grown to be an angry, embittered man who caught a glimpse of Tomorrowland only to be banished for reasons eventually disclosed. Anyhoo, before Frank and Athena can get into a pissy fight (he’s still angry at her after all these years), robots descend upon Frank’s house. They must find a way back to Tomorrowland (governed by Nix) for reasons I’ll leave you to discover. Kathryn Hahn and Keegan-Michael Key play robots, whilst Tim McGraw plays Casey’s NASA employee dad.

 

I can’t remember anything much about the Disneyland theme park section (I was 11, I’m now in my mid-30s, cut me some slack! I do remember “Captain Eo” sucking balls, though), but when I think of the word ‘Tomorrowland’ I have a much different idea of what a film with that title should be like. Director Brad Bird (“The Incredibles”, “Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol”) and his co-writers Damon Lindelof (“Prometheus”, TV’s “Lost”) and debutant Jeff Jenson have taken a title and basic idea full of potential wonder, forward-thinking, and imagination…and given us something about as hi-tech and futuristic as “Futureworld” and “Doctor Who”. 60s-70s “Doctor Who” at that. I don’t know how accurate this film representation is of the Disneyland theme, but this film’s idea of futurism and ‘Tomorrow’ is all about robots and a barely thought-out world of supposed invention and imagination called “Tomorrowland”. I mean, the magic pins in this might as well be fucking decoder rings for crying out loud. I’ll give the film points for not hiding its inspiration as a theme park attraction (We even hear ‘It’s a Small World After All’), but for what is essentially sci-fi/fantasy, it’s depressingly retro and half-baked, and perhaps should never have been made into a movie so many years after the theme was created at Disneyland. Sure, there’s a global warming subtext to it, but a) That’s as much a retro/present issue as it is futuristic when you think about it, and b) The way it plays out is so murky that I’m personally not sure if the film is for global warming awareness or if it believes it’s all scare-mongering. When you watch the film, you’ll see what I mean. Suffice to say that the person delivering the global warming message is probably poorly chosen if it’s meant to be pro-Environmental action. It’s bizarre.

 

I love 50s sci-fi, but I just think it’s disappointing that a film with this title and basic idea proves to have a less detailed and less ‘futuristic’ worldview than “The Jetsons”. Aside from its environmental predicament, you learn practically nothing about Tomorrowland throughout the course of the film. That’s just not right. How can I care about its fate if I don’t know enough about the place itself? I’m sorry, but ‘robots are way cool!’ just doesn’t cut it for me. If this is faithful to the Disneyland theme (Opened in 1955!), then Bird should’ve given it a significant update, and I don’t mean an environmental subtext. I mean a genuinely interesting, genuinely futuristic worldview. Lensed by Claudio Miranda (“Tron: Legacy”, “The Life of Pi”) it’s a crisply shot, pretty film, but surprisingly hollow and old-hat.

 

The casting of Britt Robertson, meanwhile, is not to the film’s betterment either. There’s something innately smug about her as an actress and when you couple that with a frankly not very likeable or sympathetic lead character that she plays (not to mention Mr. Smug himself as her co-star), it really is hard to be drawn into this film. In fact, it gets really boring really quickly. Co-star Raffey Cassidy is no better than Robertson, she’s affected, irritating and unconvincing. She also reminded me way too much of Tami Stronach’s Child Empress in the classic fantasy flick “The NeverEnding Story”, making me wish I was in Fantasia instead (no, not “Fantasia”. That was a pretentious wannabe artsy Disney flick, don’t even get me started on it). As for George Clooney, as much as he’s not my favourite actor/movie star he’s OK here, probably the best thing about the whole film aside from the cinematography.

 

Good-looking, but boring, antiquated, and populated by at least two off-putting young female performances. This just isn’t the great, imaginative sci-fi fantasy/futuristic flick you expect going in. You’d think Disney doing Disney would be a winner, but this is pretty ordinary stuff with a political message that is probably a lot murkier than intended. I’m not surprised this one flopped. There’s no joy, no awe, no wonderment. For a film called “Tomorrowland” it feels very 40-50 years ago. Go to Disneyland instead. It’ll be more expensive, especially if you’re not American, but at least you’ll actually have fun there, if only because you’re experiencing it first-hand.

 

Rating: C