Flashbacks from the Future: A "Tomorrowland" Review

I’m all for the whole optimism, glass is half-full business but Tomorrowland just did a shitty job at making a movie out of it. There’s goes my review in just one sentence.

Britt Robertson (Casey Newton) gets her hands on a mysterious pin that “magically” transports her to a futuristic place hidden somewhere in space and time called Tomorrowland. However, the pin runs out of juice, and she now needs the help of an inventor named Frank Walker (George Clooney) in order to get back. She later finds out that Tomorrowland is no longer as beautiful as she first saw it, and that it may directly affect her world back home.

Tomorrowland Trailer

Right at the start of the movie it already annoyed me with how it did its exposition through poorly written narration and anti-climactic flashbacks. Actually, that was how the movie felt like – one huge exposition about a place called Tomorrowland (yes, it’s named after that section of Disneyland) for 1 and a half hours, which led to a lame conflict and finally a lazy resolution for the remaining minutes of the film. A huge chunk of the movie was just explaining what Tomorrowland is or how it came to be…and the filmmakers probably thought that they’re adding some hints of mystery to this kiddie sci-fi but what they actually did was just make majority of the film too dragging, I almost wanted to get too comfy on my seat and doze off. Exposition could have been done in like 10 or 20 minutes but no, they stretched it to make it what the whole movie was about.

And did I mention the lame conflict and the lazy resolution? It’s bad enough that the assassins (yep, I don’t mind spoiling you because it’s not that good anyways) seemed to be Terminator rip-offs, but when you finally get to the part where we have the big reveal of the antagonists, it’s gonna elicit a variety of responses along the lines of “I don’t get it” and “Is that it?”. Worse is that it disguises the awfully no-brainer resolution with a misplaced sense of optimism, that it made me think of Sky High as a better movie. At least it’s not trying to pretend that it’s smart.

I was also very uncomfortable with the suggestions of romance between George Clooney’s and Raffey Cassidy’s characters, and how it makes their relationship go too close to being borderline pedo. Seriously, Disney? To give you a little bit of background, their characters sort of got attracted to each other at some point, but Frank gets old while Cassidy’s Athena does not, so technically we’re already approaching some hints of pedophilia if we wanna try to push their romance thing. It’s weird and uncomfortable, and in spite of being a Disney film, I wouldn’t want to watch this with the kids.

***

I came to the cinema expecting Tomorrowland to be one of those typical Disney feel-good movies that tickles your sense of wonder and brings out the child in you. Maybe it’s just me but I think the movie failed miserably even with just achieving that. Just wait for it on Disney Channel and go see Mad Max instead.

 Credits to the images and videos used in this post go to "Tomorrowland" and/or to their respective owners. I do not own these materials. No copyright infringement intended.