If you’re like me you were pretty excited for Tomorrowland. Almost everything Brad Bird touches is magic and his obsession with nostalgia made a perfect fit for a film based off a Disneyland park whose future never came to be. Plus, George Clooney is just a sexy-ass man.
One would expect the movie to be about hope, dreams and humanity’s desperate grasp for a better tomorrow, and it is… it so is. Tomorrowland is a film full of relentless optimism, and I mean relentless. There’s a line where a film’s themes turn into tropes and Tomorrowland whizzes past it so fast that by the time you’re ten minutes in you kind of want to be ten minutes out. For Tomorrowland the future couldn’t be brighter, for those going to see the movie in theaters it definitely could.
Tomorrowland
Director: Brad Bird
Release Date: May 22, 2015
Rated: PG-13
Unlike Bird’s other writing/directing efforts Tomorrowland is a blunt hammer that uses almost no subtly or panache to tell a story about the contradictions inherent in human nature and our inability to save ourselves. The screenplay is lump of dialog put together simply to once again inform us that we’re destroying the earth and if we don’t change it’s all going to end. What’s at fault for this inevitable calamity? Who knows. Politics, money, video games, movies, reality television; everything is wrong and nothing is right. That is, of course, unless we hold on to our hope and try to make a better… sorry, I just threw up a bit in my mouth.
Again and again this movie comes back to our destruction of the world. In this case it’s literal as there’s a count down to doomsday. The move opens with a painfully done “talking to the camera” narration that only serves to highlight the thud of a screenplay. Frank Walker (George Clooney) and Casey Newton (Britt Robertson) — yes, naming a lead character Newton is about as subtle as the movie gets — are telling the story of how they came to be where they are now. It turns out that when Frank was a child he was whisked away to a wondrous city called Tomorrowland by a girl named Athena (Raffey Cassidy). We flash forward a few decades and Frank is living in a run down house while Casey finds a magic pin that takes her to Tomorrowland, but all is not right and the three must join together to save the future.
Narratively the film is a mess, with cause and effect having little consequence and tension building at a snails pace as the movie spews one cliche ideal after another. The problem isn’t the ideals (I agree with almost all of them), but their execution. Tomorrowland screams about a lot of problems and offers almost no solutions. At times hypocritically complaining about action movies and then rolling right into an action sequence. It feels more like the film is saying what it thinks it should be instead of what it believes in, and Bird doesn’t help it along any with his uncharacteristically heavy-handed direction. At times the overwhelmingly obvious cues of environmental friendliness and peace illicit eye rolls instead of agreement. We get it. Wind power is awesome and we shouldn’t kill each other, you don’t need to remind us with every cut.
I will admit that despite being burdensome, Tomorrowland‘s optimism is a bit refreshing. It is truly always happy and excited for itself. In a landscape of movies that are often dour, even from Disney themselves, this one stands out for always, always, always being upbeat even when it’s not. Maybe that’s part of it’s biggest problem, though. Because the film, and Casey especially, are always looking at the bright side and always exclaiming how amazing everything is then nothing is. Except for one scene involving the Eiffel Tower almost nothing from the film is truly amazing.
That goes especially for the movies special effects, action and acting… which is basically the entire film. There’s a massive dependence on digital effects for the movie and they aren’t where they need to be, especially after seeing what can be done with practical stunts last week. We’re supposed to be awed by Tomorrowland itself, but it never feels original or special. When action does come it is routinely basic and incoherent. Bird seems as sloppy as the screenplay in his direction of anything that moves fast.
Almost every actor could be swapped out for any other actor. Clooney especially feels rough in the role, as if he doesn’t care enough to really work with it. The only stand out is Cassidy who offers the film’s best line and the only serious depth in any character.
Finally, the movie is oddly violent. In another instance of hypocrisy, actual murders occur on screen. There’s no blood, but people are vaporized at random and a human-looking robot has its head torn off in a fight sequence that would have given the film an R-rating had the combatants not been robotic. It all feels woefully out of context in a film that is decrying our ever escalating enjoyment of violence in media and more importantly is intended for children.
Tomorrowland is nostalgic for a future that never happened, much like Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris is for a past that never happened, but it loses its fun and love in its overbearing effort to send a message. It’s flat plotline and dud action mean that nothing ever sparkles despite the actors repeatedly telling you that it does. Does it actually care about its message? It’s unclear. If it does it’s doing such a terrible job of sending it that it feels disingenuous. Great films have meaning to their message, all Tomorrowland does is shout from the mountain top that we’re doing it all wrong. Well, Brad Bird, so are you.
