Review: TOMORROWLAND

TOMORROWLAND  (SCI-FI/ADVENTURE)
3 out of 4 stars 
Directed by Brad Bird
Starring: Britt Robertson, George Clooney, Raffey Cassidy, Hugh Laurie, Tim McGraw, Kathryn Hahn, Keegan-Michael Key, Chris Bauer, Thomas Robinson, Pierce Gagnon, Matthew MacCaull, Judy Greer
Rated PG for sequences of sci-fi action violence and peril, thematic elements, and language.
130 minutes
Verdict: Exciting, funny and refreshingly optimistic, TOMORROWLAND should satisfy most audiences, but those looking for something on par with Brad Bird's previous directorial efforts may be disappointed.
YOU MAY ENJOY TOMORROWLAND IF YOU LIKED:
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - GHOST PROTOCOL  (2011)
THE INCREDIBLES  (2004)
INTERSTELLAR  (2014)
STAR WARS  (1977)
STAR TREK  (2009)

"A vista into a world of wondrous ideas, signifying man's achievements...a step into the future, with predictions of constructive things to come.  Tomorrow offers new frontiers in science, adventure and ideas: the Atomic Age, the challenge of outer space, and the hope for a peaceful and unified world."
Walt Disney spoke those words at the dedication of the themed land "Tomorrowland" on the opening day of Disneyland Park on July 17, 1955 - sixty years ago come July.  Tomorrowland was the last area of the theme park finished for the opening day, and due to the rushed schedule and budget restraints, was not yet completed as envisioned.  In many cases, its attractions were essentially corporate showcases of new products and budding technologies, but was also arguably the most educational land in the park.  One of the opening day attractions that remains in operation to this day was Autopia, in which park guests drive miniature automobiles through a track representative of the multi-lane Interstate Highway System on the American horizon, approved in legislation in 1956.  Other attractions included the short-lived Flying Saucers, a hovercraft bumper cars attraction that lasted from 1961-1966, Flight to the Moon, a simulation speculating on how mankind might travel to the Moon, opening in 1955 and re-opened in 1975 as Mission to Mars, and a "House of the Future" constructed primarily of plastic and furnished with state-of-the-art technologies, including a microwave oven back in 1957.  When the House of the Future was finally removed, an almost comical series of demolition tools were exhausted before it had to be taken apart piece by piece.
When Disneyland opened sixty years ago, Tomorrowland officially represented a then-realistic possibility for the year 1986.  Today, it mostly represents a consciously fantastical vision of the future, inspired by the concepts of Jules Verne and steampunk designs, with its most popular attractions being the Star Wars-themed Star Tours: The Adventures Continue and the dark roller coaster Space Mountain.  Nothing against Star Wars or Space Mountain, which are unarguably awesome, but what changed?

Disney's new film, TOMORROWLAND, explores the what ifs and whys of what happened to our grandparents' visions of the "great, big, beautiful tomorrow", to borrow a phrase from the catchy Sherman Brother's song featured in the Disney Parks and now the film.  What happened to the dreams of jet packs, pristine, towering cities, interplanetary travel and world community?
Early in the film, young and idealistic eleven-year-old boy genius Frank Walker (played as a boy by Thomas Robinson) arrives at the 1964 New York World's Fair to submit his homemade jet pack in an invention competition and is noticed by a strange girl named Athena (Raffey Cassidy) who gives him a pin and beckons him to follow her and her friends on the It's a Small World ride at the UNICEF pavilion.  Doing so, he discovers that the pin gives him access to a secret passageway, transporting him to another dimension where the best and brightest minds have come together to construct a futuristic utopia for mankind.  But then something went wrong.
In the present day, Casey Newton (Britt Robertson) is a highly optimistic and brilliant teen troubled by the endless stream of doomsayers in the world around her, while she spends her nights sabotaging the demolition equipment scheduled to remove a NASA launching pad at Cape Canaveral.  One day, she comes into possession of a pin that she's never seen before, but which teleports her into the same futuristic utopia Frank was taken to years before the moment she touches it.  The experience is short-lived however, and searching for more information about the pin and the place it took her to, Casey winds up on the doorstep of Frank Walker (George Clooney), now a curmudgeonly man overwhelmed by the dark future for mankind that he sees and reluctant to tell Casey what she wants to know.  Frank's actions in the other world are now beginning to spill over into ours however, and Casey, it seems, is the key to reversing the collision course the humanity is on.  And the only way to do that is to return to Tomorrowland.

TOMORROWLAND, written by Lost showrunner Damon Lindelof and director Brad Bird, is a fascinating and refreshing response to the dystopia-obsessed pop culture landscape today where young adult dystopian fiction and zombies rule the zeitgeist.  Are we a society that has become obsessed with our own demise, and does that obsession feed into self-destructive tendencies?  Also, aren't jet packs and world unity way more enticing?  It's an idea film, but unlike last year's slightly similarly themed INTERSTELLAR, it's a lot more fun and more convincing in its arguments for mankind's potential.  Unfortunately, like INTERSTELLAR, it falls short of its potential, primarily due to a script that is only half-baked in some crucial areas.
Brad Bird is one of the greatest directors of his generation, with previous films including THE IRON GIANT (1999), THE INCREDIBLES (2004), RATATOUILLE (2007) and MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - GHOST PROTOCOL (the first three which he wrote or co-wrote), all of which are essentially "perfect" films.  He's a master storyteller who combines pop art, deep emotion and high thrills in energetic and idealistic films, and he does the same here; TOMORROWLAND is a beautiful, exciting and inspiring product; but when it all comes to a head in the third act, the substance deflates in a scattershot finale.  It's not a dint in the action of the finale, which is inventive and thrilling, but all the ideas that have been building to something find themselves without satisfactory cohesion.
Britt Robertson, who was a highlight in the otherwise ridiculous recent Nicholas Sparks' film adaptation, THE LONGEST RIDE, gets material better suited to her talents here, as the spunky and bewildered young heroine Casey, and is a good foil to George Clooney's crabby and disillusioned Frank.  It may sound creepy, but some of the film's best comedy and Clooney's best moments involve Frank's bickering with an old crush that didn't grow old, ergo, a little girl.
Most audiences will find a lot to like here; exciting and creative action sequences, humor and spectacular visuals matched by spectacular energy and optimism (however, parents of very young children be cautioned, the intense action sometimes pushes the limits of the PG rating).  Even if it doesn't come together neatly like it should, it's hard not to be inspired by its optimistic vision of human potential once old and now made new again.