‘Tomorrowland’, the science-fiction adventure film set in multiple dimension and time-periods, tells the story of Frank Walker (George Clooney), his protégé Casey Newton (Britt Robertson), and their android helper Athena (Raffey Cassidy) as they attempt to bring hope back into our world.
The movie is filled with visual effects that leave viewers entranced, especially the place in another dimension that is Tomorrowland, a place where the smartest and most creative minds can work to solve the world’s problems free of the things that hinder the work on ours. Clooney and Robertson are wonderfully casted in the movie, but theirs efforts are too little too late to hide the glaring plot holes in the movie.
The movie, two hours and ten minutes long, invests heavily into providing context and appears more as a bunch of exciting and interesting scenes thrown together than the type of intricately woven stories we’ve come to expect from Disney movies. It’s also hard to tell just what the story is about, Walker’s redemption after losing hope, Newton being inspired to start an effort that may change an inevitable doom, or the resurrection of hope in general.
The lack of an outright villain to root against in the film also makes it harder for viewers to become invested in the trio’s quest, and the fact that the supposed greatest and most creative minds that live in Tomorrowland and are recruited into it, like Walker and Newton, are predominantly Caucasian Americans can irk the many people who don’t fit into that category.
Director Brad Bird attempts to cover these inadequacies with wry humor and heart-wrenching scenes, but his work ends up becoming exhibit A for the beliefs of Tomorrowland Governor David Nix: humans are capable of wonderful feats and accomplishments, but we always get in our own way and sell ourselves short.
For a movie with hardly any plot and little to offer, this film still has enough Disney magic to justify watching it. However, much like the realities of our tomorrow compared to our expectation of it, it is sweet, inspiring, yet ultimately disappointing.
