Three stars
Dir: Brad Bird
With: George Clooney, Britt Robertson, Hugh Laurie
Runtime: 130 minutes
GEORGE Clooney's career has taken on a pendulum quality of late, swinging between the wild, seven-Oscar success that was Gravity, and the stone cold critical clunker that went by the name of The Monuments Men. Tomorrowland finds the newly spliced star somewhere in between with an agreeable action adventure that aims high but only ever hits the middle range of its ambitions. Clooney plays Frank Walker, who once upon a time, we learn in flashback, went to the World's Fair in 1964. Wide-eyed, brim full of big ideas, excited about the future, Frank is the spirit of the early Sixties poured into the body of a kid. At the Fair he meets two people who will change his life: a tech giant by the name of David Nix (Hugh Laurie) and his bright as a factory full of buttons daughter Athena (Raffey Cassidy). Via them, Frank is given a glimpse of Tomorrowland, a world as shiny and hopeful as himself. Any resemblance between the title of this Tomorrowland and the one run by Disney, the film's makers, is purely intentional. Cut to several decades later and here is a teenage sunbeam by the name of Casey Newton. Newton by name, born scientist by nature, Casey despairs at the way her age sees space travel as a costly dream, and teachers who tell her constantly that the world is going to hell in a hand cart economically, environmentally, and every other way, and there is nothing anyone can do about it. Casey is tired of hearing about problems. Where are the solutions, she demands. Yes, she is rather annoying. What brings Frank, now bitter, cynical and a recluse, and Casey together is just the start of Brad Bird's picture. The very act of uniting them, and setting up the story, takes up a hefty chunk of the film. Audiences young and old will need to exercise patience, and stifle vague feelings of bafflement as Bird sets all his plot wheels whirring. Get used to those feelings. Tomorrowland has some big ideas to explore, about optimism versus pessimism, government versus individualism, faith against scepticism. Or as John Lennon put it, this-ism, that-ism, ism, ism, ism. If that sounds like a tall order for a family movie, it is. Tomorrowland is a film that wants to be Interstellar for kids, but it is really more The Jetsons. But to give him his due, the director of Ratatouille, The Incredibles, and Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol tries hard, he really does. He pours everything into the mix, from fearless girl heroines who can look after themselves to scary robots, Nikola Tesla and even the Eiffel Tower. In parts the film is spectacular and enthralling, like the best ever visit to the world's foremost science museum. As a whole, however, one too many plot twists, and a surfeit of tech babble, makes for a film that putters and stutters along rather than soars, being something of a head-scratcher as it goes along. If your young cinemagoers are the type to deliver a gentle prod in the sides as a prelude to asking a question, you might want to go to Tomorrowland armed with some extra padding because those little elbows are going to be working overtime. Clooney, as in The Descendants, settles comfortably into the father figure role, while his young co-stars are given plenty of space to do their respective thing and grab it. There are no complaints on the cast front. Nor is it a ny bad thing to have a film that wants to be educational as well as entertaining. But as almost any Spielberg movie will show, a director has to pack in a lot of fun with the facts, and a mountain of feeling too. Who did not laugh, cry, and learn a lot about everything from ancient Egypt to close encounters with Spielberg?Tomorrowland can do the facts, but it falls down on the fun and feeling. As a result, a film with a rocket full of wow factors fails ultimately to pierce the stratosphere.
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