directed by Brad Bird
written by Damon Lindelof, Brad Bird and Jeff Jensen
Once upon a time, animator/storyteller/director Brad Bird could do no wrong in the eyes of film critics. While dis debut animated feature-film back in 1999, The Iron Giant, did not set the box-office on fire (and was, in fact, a bomb), it was quite well-received by film critics, and to date it has a highly enviable 97% "Fresh" score of review aggregator site rottentomatoes.com. When Bird started collaborating with Walt Disney's Pixar Studios, the results were magical: 2004's The Incredibles and 2007's Ratatouille were both critical and commercial successes, and both movies won Brad Bird an Academy Award. They certainly made me a dyed-in-the-wool fan. He then successfully made the transition to live-action filmmaking with 2011's Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, the best-reviewed film in the series and one of the highest grossing ones as well.
As a result, when it was announced that Bird was working on a top-secret, live-action project for Walt Disney pictures starring George Clooney, there was quite a bit of excitement generated among fans like myself and the filmgoing community in general.
Tomorrowland is basically the story of a secret community of cutting-edge innovators who live just beyond the fringes of our reality, sort of a secret society of geniuses.
The story begins at the New York World's in 1964, where an 11-year-old boy named Frank Walker (Thomas Robinson), presents his invention a rocket pack that doesn't quite work, to a stern judge named David Nix (Hugh Laurie), in the hope of winning prize money and getting the opportunity to improve his invention further. He is summarily rejected, but not before he has piqued the attention of Athena (Raffey Cassidy), a young child like himself who hands him a pin with a "T" and tells him to secretly follow her and the rest of the judges headed by the unpleasant Nix. Frank complies, and finds himself in a fantastical city in the sky filled with robots and wondrous flying machines. One such robot ends up tweaking his jet pack, and not a moment too soon as Frank falls from one of the sky-high towers and finds himself using the jet pack to save his life, and, with his impressive display, securing his place in Tomorrowland.
Over fifty years later, fifteen-year-old Casey Newton (Britt Robertson), is at the end of her rope; her father (Tim McGraw), an engineer for NASA will soon find himself out of work as the launch platform where he works is set for dismantling for no other cited reason than that "people are running out of ideas," and Casey does everything she can that doesn't involve violence to stave off the dismantling, including sabotaging the heavy equipment. Unfortunately, her activism brings her in trouble with the law, and as she is being released into her father's recognizance she discovers, among her things, a pin very similar to the one given to Frank at the beginning of the film, one that shows her a fantastic place every time she touches it. In her determination to understand what she is seeing, however, Casey finds herself in grave danger, and she'll need the help of Athena, and the now-adult Frank (George Clooney) to get herself out of it. One thing is clear; Casey has to find her way to Tomorrowland, before it's too late.
A little over a week after its worldwide opening, Tomorrowland, has apparently disappointed across the board with underwhelming box-office receipts and lukewarm reviews. Personally, I really enjoyed it, but I think I understand what the problem was.
Tomorrowland is a film fueled by a wonderful sense of nostalgia, and hearkens back to a time when people's image of the future was all about jet packs and space travel. Unfortunately, we're living in an age where moviegoers have been to several other worlds, courtesy of Star Trek, Star Wars and even Avatar, where they've seen wondrous things like dinosaurs brought back to life and finally, they've seen men don suits of armor that can fly and shoot lasers, all of which make Bird's (and co-writer Damon Lindelof's) visions of tomorrow look positively quaint. The truth is, most people have already seen too much, whether on the big screen, the small screen, or even their handheld devices to be impressed by what this film has to offer. Now, I happen to be a fan of the brand of nostalgia that Bird is peddling, but I totally get why not many other people are.
To sort of compensate for the general lack of oomph, Bird and Lindelof wrap the story in layer upon layer of mystery, and to the credit of Disney's marketing crew, they followed suit. The problem was that all of the mystery surrounding the narrative made people wonder just what it was they were going to see, and with that much expectation, especially considering Bird's track record, he was basically setting himself up to disappoint.
I disagree with the notion that people rejected this for being a "message movie" considering that the highest grossing film of all time Avatar, is one of the most hackneyed message movies ever, but I do agree that Bird could have taken a different approach to proselytizing. Avatar may have been preachy, but it gave audiences a heck of a ride while it was doing it. As someone who's given audiences some pretty spectacular action scenes in the past, one would think Bird could have pulled this off with a bit more panache.
So if there was so much wrong with this film, why did I like it? Well it still has quite a bit going for it, like Bird's gift for "retro-futuristic" visual flair, generous helpings of the humor and witty dialogue that made his best films as entertaining as they were, some excellently filmed action scenes apart from the disappointing climax, and some winning performances from his principal actors. The production design is wondrous to behold, though as I said, it really isn't anything new, and neither are the admittedly slick visual effects on display courtesy of Industrial Light and Magic.
Robertson is delightful as the lead; the scenes of her popping in and out of Tomorrowland are the centerpiece of the film's marketing (and of the film, to an extent) and she sells the heck of out of them. Clooney doesn't disappoint as the curmudgeonly version of Frank Walker, but the real surprise is how well Thomas Robinson, who actually resembles Clooney a bit, plays his younger version. Laurie makes the most out of a thankless role, as Nix, delivering the film's central sermon--er, message, at the climax. It's a terrible waste of a great actor, to my mind. For me, the breakthrough performance here was that of Cassidy as the mysterious Athena. It's hard to go into detail about her performance without spoiling a couple of surprises about her role, but suffice it to say that like Robertson, her role required her to do some pretty funny things with a straight face, and she pulled it off quite well.
This film is a bit of a hiccup for Bird, who really was on a roll for many years, though I hardly think it's set him on the same downward spiral that M. Night Shyamalan found himself on ten years ago.
I'm still waiting for him to come up with The Incredibles 2...
7.1/10
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