Cast: It's a surprisingly limited cast. Geroge Clooney gets top billing despite being a supporting character. He plays his character like he's the only guy who understood the ending of LOST and is tired of explaining it to his friends. He doesn't divulge much more information than he must and it's a nicely lived-in role. Britt Robertson is the actual lead. She's fine. She doesn't bring anything extra to the role (I've confirmed that I'm not the only one who initially thought she was Danielle Panabaker, who could've played this character with exactly the same effect). Raffey Cassidy, despite being the youngest of the stars, gets the most interesting emotional arc and, not coincidentally, has the most memorable character. Some others like Hugh Laurie, Judy Greer (a role literally cut down to hearing her voice for a few seconds), and Tim McGraw show up for a while, but never for very long.
Plot: Disney has kept this pretty cryptic, so nearly anything I'm going to say will be some kind of a spoiler. I'll try to hold back. Still, be warned. It starts with a young boy named Frank Walker at the 1964 World's Fair in New York. With the help of a young girl named Athena (Cassidy) he is led to Tomorrowland, a world in an alternate dimension that's a 1960's futuristic utopia. Cut to the present day. The movie follows a teenage girl, Casey (Robertson), a plucky optimist who doesn't see the point in complaining about things that you don't intend to try and fix. Casey finds a pin that temporarily brings her to Tomorrowland. Once the pin stops working, she meets up with Athena, who still looks the same as she did in 1964, and a recluse Frank, now played by Clooney (don't do the math with those ages). From there, it's a story about a coming apocalypse that they must prevent, and returning to Tomorrowland is key to that. The story has two main issues that bothered me. 1) While I'm sure Brad Bird and Damon Lindelof planned it all out, there's simply too much story for the run time, which leads to more telling than showing of a lot of things. 2) For a movie called Tomorrowland, there's not nearly enough Tomorrowland. Perhaps, Journey to Tomorrowland would be a better title.
Elephant in the Room: This looks like Corporate Synergy: The Movie. It's not. In fact, I'm sure there's more than a few Disney executives that are angry that Bird didn't find more of a way to make this an informational for the Tomorrowland section of Disney Parks. Don't get me wrong. There's still a considerable amount of plugging. The road to get to Tomorrowland in 1964 involves the it's a small world ride and there's a SciFi store in one scene that might as well be called What Does Disney Own. For the most part, this movie exists for itself and not branding though.
To Sum Things Up:
I want to find a way to recommend this movie more than I can. The message of the movie is a good one (Some mix of "Allow exceptional people to be exception" from The Incredibles and "Work toward making the future you want to see" from Meet the Robinsons). The execution of the movie as a whole is questionable. I get a sense that this is not the exact story that Bird and Lindelof wanted to tell: that they had so many more ideas than they could fit in a two hour movie. It moves at a great pace (the first 90 minutes of the movie felt like half that). I loved the depth and history of the relationship between Frank and Athena.There's plenty of humor in it as well.
Ultimately, I'm torn about this. You see, there's two wolves in my head fighting. One looks at the technical aspects of the movie that weren't executed very well. The other responds to the great message and the few moments when everything does click.
Which one do I feed?
Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend
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