Awful. I don't understand why I find so many good reviews for this movie. The story was ridiculous. The Eiffel Tower is a high tech antenna built by Nikola Tesla that transforms into a launchpad for an antique rocket that transports you to another dimension? Oh, and to get to the Eiffel Tower, our heroes used a magic transporter device that inexplicably uses satellites and unfortunately drains your body of 90% of its blood sugar. Thankfully there's a fridge at the other side (at the top of the Eiffel Tower) with a couple of bottles of Coca-Cola in it. Hurray for product placement. Britt Robertson then demonstrates the unfortunate bodily effects of drinking two bottles of soda in 10 seconds due to being drastically affected by the machine, while somehow George Clooney was miraculously able to walk away completely unscathed. If that sounds bad to you, you're likely not going to enjoy the preceding half hour of the protagonists trying to escape from robots trying to kill them with laser guns that turn humans into a burst of CG dust. I guess my point is that if you're the sort of person that isn't bothered by stuff like 10 year olds inventing complex machinery that futuristic robots somehow know how to repair so that said 10 year old can somehow know how to fly the invention that's never worked before around a city of nonsense, then you're likely not to mind the mountain of plot holes this movie rests upon. I'm sure this movie is perfectly enjoyable for children, but it was immature and annoying in my eyes =(
George Clooney stars as world-weary inventor and former boy-genius who once inhabited Tomorrowland, a place located in an alternate reality. He runs into Britt Robertson, a bright teenager keen to go back there and fix what went wrong.
Tomorrowland begins with the typical start-at-the-end-then-rewind idea that gets used and abused far too much. This scene lasts far too long; Clooney and Robertson share in some friendly repartee as they decide who can tell the story better. It feels like delaying tactics before getting the story under way, never a good sign.
Then we sweep back in time to Clooney’s childhood, with even more build-up to the main show. However at this point we’re well over an hour into the film and things are dragging on.
This is typical of the whole film. It’s building to something that isn’t there - like a crescendo that never quite ends right. As the final third comes in, there’s nothing to be revealed, nothing to be said of any interest, just lots of loose ends and unanswered questions.
The central idea is solid though. The notion that the tinkerers and dreamers are the ones that make the future is an attractive one. We must fuel optimism in order to brighten the days to come. Tomorrowland is a place built to symbolise the beauty of ingenuity and creativity, something that could be really exciting to see on film.
Sadly, in practice Bird does not come close to inspiring this level of awe and wonderment in the audience. The visuals are sumptuous but the story is just too fragmented and nonsensical. Many elements aren’t clearly explained, which is fine, but we are made to feel as though we missed something, which is not fair.
Tomorrowland is a beautiful, immaculately designed mess of a story. Unfortunately, visual effects aren’t enough to save the film and ultimately it’s a confusing and frustrating experience. Very disappointing.
http://benoliver999.com/film/2015/10/17/tomorrowland/
[7.4/10] You’d have to sleep through the movie to miss the intended message of Tomorrowland. Optimistic visions of the future are good. Dystopian and/or apocalyptic visions of the future are bad. Each is self-reinforcing, so feed the good wolf. Glory to the dreamers, those who refuse to give up, even when everyone else is content with complacency and destruction. The film is never shy about these points, broadcasting them as loudly and clearly as some futuristic giant antennae.
But even if that sentiment is more than a tad trite, clarity of theme isn’t the worst thing for a movie to have, especially when it’s much more lacking when it comes to clarity of plot. It’s a good thing to build anticipation and mystery in a film, but Tomorrowland spends the opening two-thirds of the movie offering, at best, cryptic hints as to what the titular utopia of progress is, why our protagonist is needed there, and most importantly, what exactly the globe-imperiling threat is and, with that, what the actual stakes here are.
Once the film gets to its third act, brings our heroes to the vaunted land of tomorrow, and puts its cards on the table, business picks up. The characters’ motivations become clearer; the story has more focus, and the emotional and thematic moments land with more force. Until then, the movie tries to coast on anticipation and chemistry, which muddles the characters in places and loses some of its force in this cinematic game of hide the ball.
And yet, hoping to get by on chemistry alone isn’t the worst bet here. It says something when George Clooney gives arguably the weakest performance of your main ensemble (and for the record, he’s not bad). Britt Robertson does strong work as our main protagonist, Casey Newton, the brilliant and inventive dreamer who’s more focused on trying to fix the world than lamenting its demise. She not only holds her own with Clooney, but sells the combination of wide-eyed wonder and hard-nose determination necessary to make an almost impossible character work.
But both are upstaged by a tween. Raffey Cassidy delivers a performance well beyond her years as Athena, the android child who acts as a recruiter for the collection of imaginative and advanced minds in Tomorrowland. Cassidy sells the aura of robotic detachment, while also conveying subtle layers of exasperation, determination, wistfulness, regret, wry sarcasm, and even love. The film asks a lot of her, especially as a child actor, but she more than meets the challenge.
It’s no coincidence, then, that the most enjoyable stretches of Tomorrowland come when the film puts the three of them together. There’s a fun dose of banter, different personalities clashing, and differing perspectives and levels of experience bouncing off one another that helps give life to both the show’s maximalist set pieces and its frantic interludes between them. In brief stretches, the film is kind of a buddy/road trip film, and that’s its most enjoyable mode.
Then, of course, there’s the inimitable Hugh Laurie, who plays the film’s villain. He not only brings the dry wit that fans of House M.D. are already familiar with, but he gets the speech. If you’ve seen other films from Brad Bird (who directed the film and co-wrote it with Damon Lindelof of HBO’s Watchmen mini-series), you know what I’m talking about. There comes a moment, before the climax really kicks into gear, where the bad guy announces the philosophical point of view that’s driving their action. In a Brad Bird film, they’re wrong and the ultimate conclusion is implicitly rejected by the movie, but there’s the germ of a legitimate critique, one meant to be biting to the audience at home.
Here, it’s the notion that humanity has ignored planetary warnings of its own impending destruction and instead turned the apocalypse into just another means of consumption, because it asks the littlest of it. In a world where climate change is still a threat we’re not doing nearly enough to combat and visions of global destruction and pre-apocalyptic apathy are manufactured and broadcast by the hundreds, the critique carries some sting. Laurie, as always, sells it like a champ, and the writing of his big monologue gives it thematic heft.
That’s good, because much of the film feels surprisingly weightless. Maybe it’s just that Tomorrowland doesn’t do more than hint at its stakes until late in its runtime, but it doesn’t help that the major set pieces feel more perfunctory than wondrous. Coming from the world of animation, Brad Bird and his team know how to construct a good sequence. And yet, whether it’s fighting killer robots or blasting to another dimension, aside from a few neat flourishes, it’s an unexpectedly ho-hum experience.
Perhaps this is where a big screen viewing would pick up some of the slack, but it ties into one of the movie’s bigger problems. An overreliance on CGI gives everything more of a sterile, rather than inviting quality. There’s something chloraseptic and anodyne about several of the design choices, which makes it harder to immerse yourself in the world of the film. The one attention-grabbing element is that it’s a surprisingly violent film for a story so steeped in positivity and optimism. It’s all bloodless, but people are painfully crushed, humanoid robots are stabbed and decapitated, and child-like androids are hit by trucks.
That’s the other uncomfortable oddity in this film. Again, Raffidy does a great job at selling Athena the recruiter-bot’s world-weariness that belies her youthful appearance. The problem is that much of Clooney’s character’s arc hinges on him having lost hope for the world at least partly because he lost hope from an interpersonal standpoint, having faced rejection from his father and, as a boy himself, harbored affections for Athena that he eventually learned she could not return. Part of his laudable growth and arc here is learning that she did love him in her way, and even grow because of him, which likewise helps restore his belief that the improbable can be made possible and the world can be saved.
The big issue there is that it requires fifty-four-year-old George Clooney to cradle Athena and look deeply and lovingly into the eyes of a young woman who, however old her character may be, isn’t far removed from elementary school in real life. The movie thankfully plays it chaste and, once again, Raffidy sells the “I’m sorry I hurt you” vibe between them incredibly well, but it adds an icky dimension to the film’s emotional high point that is hard to ignore.
Still, Tomorrowland’s heart is in the right place, and once it stops just peddling its themes and instead starts grappling with them in the latter part of the movie, it lands with real force. The mechanics of why the world is doomed and how our heroes can save it are a little wonky and don’t necessarily work beyond a metaphorical level, but it’s good enough for an imaginative fantasy film. More to the point, while as a blockbuster, the film includes the obligatory final reel fireworks and blowing up of the big giant thing, it emphasizes in its closing moments that truly saving the planet will require more than one climactic act, but rather the ideas and, more importantly, the hard work of scores of creative and inventive people across the globe.
That message is not subtle, and at times Bird and company struggle to communicate in a way that doesn’t feel oversimplified or blunt, but it’s a strong animating idea. There’s something appealing about the notion of returning to the hopeful vision of the future of the space age, that we can solve the multitude of problems plaguing us today, rather than simply slump under the weight of them. I’ll admit to bristling a bit at the directness with which Tomorrowland conveys that message. But if it serves as the positive inspiration the movie itself posits as sorely needed, particularly for the generation of young people its aimed at who’ll be inheriting those problems, then so much the better. A brighter tomorrow is worth being more direct than artful.
I went into this movie expecting to hate it. Based on what I'd heard, I was planning for a clunker with bad effects. I'm happy to say I was pleasantly surprised. The visuals are amazing, and the plot is hopeful and interesting, centered mostly around a negative "self-fulfilling prophecy" playing out in our reality. Without getting into spoilers, there's a good reason for our current obsessions with negativity and dystopia and apocalyptic zombie movies. We're being told the world is going to hell, and we're buying into it.
I can understand some of the negative criticism. There are too many CGI robots, enough to make action scenes feel boring. A weird tonal shift happens early on, amping up the violence and throwing viewers for a loop. And many of the action scenes feel hurried and overworked. The ten-minute house invasion section was so rushed, a dozen nifty inventions are thrown at the viewer so quickly, they can't be appreciated. Plot holes and "wait, what?" moments abound, as they do in most big films nowadays. I hate being asked to not only suspend my disbelief but ignore things like physics. When a huge metal ball explodes over your head, you run away. When the film shows it crashing onto a platform where your character was standing, the viewer thinks: "oh, my, is she dead?" Of course not. She's fine, and it's not explained. People fall in water and are dry in the next moment. Humans are vaporized by mean robots and nobody cares or notices. It feels like a great fourth draft of a script that needed a little more polishing.
Unfortunately, the movie feels 20% too preachy, hitting us over the head with dangers like global warming and obesity and famine. But it takes a hopeful view, assuming that, if we work together, we can solve these problems and others. It's a hopeful message, something akin to the 1950s and 60s when the world was recovering from a devastating world war and anything seemed possible and we were landing people on the moon and making strides on social issues like civil rights and the prevention of global conflicts. Clooney and the other actors are good, although the lead actress seemed a little overwhelmed, and you can't base a huge movie like this on essentially four characters. They needed more people and more character arcs to make it have an impact.
But, in the end, this hopeful film asks us to believe that progress is a good thing, but only if that progress is in the service of good. This movie trades in a different message: hope, and hopefulness, and using our combined smarts to figure out solutions to problems. That's not something you hear a lot any more, and it was refreshing to see, especially in a big Hollywood blockbuster. It harkens back to that old Einstein saying, which is highlighted in once scene: "Imagination is more important than knowledge." And that's not a bad thing.
#Mild spoilers ahead#
I was looking forward to this movie for a while now, but I actually had to go out of my way to watch this in cinema since many places stopped showing it eerily fast after its release (which usually isn't a good sign.) As a movie that bombed in the box office I was a bit afraid of how it had turned out. Not having a 3D version while being released while big movies like Mad Max and Jurassic World are also in cinema is not easy either. It turned out to be not too bad in the end.
Of course the language and images gets toned down a bit because it is a Disney movie aimed at a younger public, but it definitely did not neglect to entertain the older audience as well. It has some great humour without being dumb or childish, and some of the lines are a bit corny, but that's to be expected with the target group in mind.
Great work from Raffey Cassidy who steals the show while George Clooney and Hugh Laurie deliver an enjoyable and professional performance. Britt Robertson (the main reason how I got interested in this flick) grows during the movie and shows the promise of an upcoming talent.
It looks like most of the budget went to the actors and visuals, the visual are rather nice as a result. Many great shots and world building is done to make the Tomorrowland feel real, as well as the CGI. The electricity (?) was especially cool to see. Even though the main plot is a bit basic, it still is a true Disney movie that can make every story level up a notch by adding some mystery and wonder. They successfully added a lot of interesting information to mix it up and avoid becoming a run of the mill family movie without substance. Also this means Hugh Laurie got some great material to work with to make him feel less of a bad guy, and you even feel a bit sorry for him in the end.
Even though the movie contains a clear message with a warning, it does maintain a positive approach, and doesn't preach its audience.
It is hard to say why this movie actually bombed, since it turned out to be so great. It will never be the best movie ever made, but it deserves much more than grossing less than half its total budget (so far.)
Here’s my “Quick and Dirty Review” of “Tomorrowland.”
I went into this movie expecting to hate it. Based on what I'd heard, I was planning for a clunker with bad effects. I'm happy to say I was pleasantly surprised. The visuals are amazing, and the plot is hopeful and interesting, centered mostly around a negative "self-fulfilling prophecy" playing out in our reality. Without getting into spoilers, there's a good reason for our current obsessions with negativity and dystopia and apocalyptic zombie movies. We're being told the world is going to hell, and we're buying into it.
I can understand some of the negative criticism. There are too many CGI robots, enough to make action scenes feel boring. A weird tonal shift happens early on, amping up the violence and throwing viewers for a loop. And many of the action scenes feel hurried and overworked. The ten-minute house invasion section was so rushed, a dozen nifty inventions are thrown at the viewer so quickly, they can't be appreciated. Plot holes and "wait, what?" moments abound, as they do in most big films nowadays. I hate being asked to not only suspend my disbelief but ignore things like physics. When a huge metal ball explodes over your head, you run away. When the film shows it crashing onto a platform where your character was standing, the viewer thinks: "oh, my, is she dead?" Of course not. She's fine, and it's not explained. People fall in water and are dry in the next moment. Humans are vaporized by mean robots and nobody cares or notices. It feels like a great fourth draft of a script that needed a little more polishing.
Unfortunately, the movie feels 20% too preachy, hitting us over the head with dangers like global warming and obesity and famine. But it takes a hopeful view, assuming that, if we work together, we can solve these problems and others. It's a hopeful message, something akin to the 1950s and 60s when the world was recovering from a devastating world war and anything seemed possible and we were landing people on the moon and making strides on social issues like civil rights and the prevention of global conflicts. Clooney and the other actors are good, although the lead actress seemed a little overwhelmed, and you can't base a huge movie like this on essentially four characters. They needed more people and more character arcs to make it have an impact.
But, in the end, this hopeful film asks us to believe that progress is a good thing, but only if that progress is in the service of good. This movie trades in a different message: hope, and hopefulness, and using our combined smarts to figure out solutions to problems. That's not something you hear a lot any more, and it was refreshing to see, especially in a big Hollywood blockbuster. It harkens back to that old Einstein saying, which is highlighted in once scene: "Imagination is more important than knowledge." And that's not a bad thing.
Synopsis: As a kid, Frank Walker (George Clooney) dreamed of being an inventor. When he showed his jet pack prototype to Governor Nix (Hugh Laurie) at a World's Fair, he ended up discovering Tomorrowland, a futuristic world featuring technology he could only dream of. A few decades later, an arrest leads to teenager Casey Newton (Britt Robertson) getting a pin that also leads her to Tomorrowland...only for the pin to run out of power. When she and now middle-aged Frank find each other, they discover what the futuristic world really is...and how it has a huge impact on our world today.
The Good: I'm not a big George Clooney fan, but, I have to hand it to him: He did an excellent job in this movie, as did the rest of the cast. The special effects were amazing, and the plot kept me involved. This kid of old-school action/adventure flick is the kind of Disney movie that I like, and I had a blast with this one.
The Bad: If only they'd kept things a bit cleaner. While I expected violence--what is science fiction without it?--I wasn't expecting at least twelve to fifteen profanities, ranging from d-words to h-words to misuses of God's name to even the British crudity "b-----ks". Also, a scene or two may frighten children.
Conclusion: When people think Disney, they usually think animation: Mickey Mouse, Aladdin, Cinderella, Finding Nemo, etc. However, I have always been more partial to their live-action productions; even before Lizzie McGuire changed my life, my favorite Mouse House flicks were ones such as Flubber or George of the Jungle. So, as you'd expect, this kind of movie is right up my alley. Profanity aside, this was a fun live-action thrill ride with a convoluted plot! I know the critics didn't like it...but, what do they know? Fans of non-animated Disney productions will enjoy this.
Score: 9/10
When this George Clooney starrer came out it was roundly poo-pooed by critics and the ticket-buying public at large so for me there was a feeling of trepidation as the opening titles popped up but as I normally do I tried to ignore the chatter about the film and go in with my eyes open. At times this is a difficult thing to do but I am glad I can usually do it.
No mistake this is a good and interesting film. Yes, that’s right Tomorrowland is good and is an interesting film, even with Damon Lindelof the plot-hole king on the writing duties. Mind you with Brad Bird on directing duties and helping write it could equally be surmised that the film would be at the least okay.
It is an adventure film wherein you don’t really know what is happening or going to happen for most of the running time. You can’t really say that about most films nowadays.
For those that like exploding helicopters and monsters every five minutes then this probably is not the film for you, although it has to be said there is a fair amount of action, chases and thrills scattered throughout to keep those that do not really lot plot and character development too much.
The setting for the alternate place of ‘Tomorrowland’ is visually stunning, if a little ‘seen some of this before’ but it never overwhelms the viewer and although denies logic most of time it never jarred me out of the story.
The main premise of the film revolving around negativity and self-fulfilling prophecies is actually a good intellectual point and conversation starter without it feeling too heavy in what can be seen to be film for youngsters. It could easily start up some interesting post-film conversations and if it makes kids do this is that really a bad thing?
The acting too is something to be recommended. George Clooney brings his usual solid and likeable performance to his role and the ‘grown-up child genius’ and you believe that his life has taken a turn for the worse that he cannot let go. Britt Robertson playing younger that she is just about passes for a teenage girl but right from the start I felt she was not as young as the film was making out – probably more the cynic in me than the actor’s performance. The standout for me was Raffey Cassidy, who played her role to perfection, I cannot really say way or how because it spoils the movie for those that have not seen it yet but this young actor earned every drop of praise she got for this role.
It was also good to see Hugh Laurie flesh out a hero giving him motivation and more to his character than just evil.
If Tomorrowland trips anywhere it is in its tone. It seems to be intense, with something fairly big and controversial to say, if not original, and is surely aimed at a younger audience and breezes along with a good helping of humour and funny spots only for some peripheral characters to suddenly end up meeting horrible and unexpected deaths. It seemed a bit of misstep to me, no need to be all soft and fuzzy but to have a sudden deaths of complete innocents suddenly pop up mid-stream seemed, well, odd.
Overall Tomorrowland is an engrossing story, with something interesting to say, if not wholly original, but it passed the test of ‘did it entertain you’. That it most certainly did.
I have to say that I quite enjoyed Tomorrowland despite its way too common mistake of being quite a bit nonsensically preachy to satisfy the current politically correct view of what is “wrong” with the world today. Filtering out those parts this is a quite enjoyable, visually very entertaining, family movie. If you have strong opinions about certain things then you might want to be with your kids when watching this one. Personally I consider my oldest son to be quite capable of making his own opinions and as for the two younger kinds I try to point out the pro’s and con’s and let them grow up to make their own mistakes.
Having that out of the way this is a visually quite wonderful movie. it is of course quite CGI enhanced but in a good way. It is a Disney movie after all so you would expect, at least I did, some “artistic freedom” as far as the scenery is concerned.
The story is actually a quite lovely “fairy tale” kind of story about a “wonderland” far far away. Initially it is a wee bit difficult to get a grip of what is happening since it all moves about all over the place a bit. If you can overcome that first disorientation it does indeed get somewhat sensible after a while. Having said that I mean “sensible” in the context of not only a wild and whacky science fiction movie but in the context of a wild and wacky science fiction movie aimed at the younger part of the audience. Despite the scientific blurb thrown around in the last half of the movie do not for a minute believe that any of the script writers have more scientific knowledge than the average Hollywood script writer which is…zero.
To me the enjoyment of this movie came from the childish fantasy style (it does have quite a bit of a fairly tale story over it), from the rather enjoyable cinematic effects, quite a bit of cool action and last but not least … George Clooney. Actually that is not entirely fair. George was part of it but what I really liked was the recruiting android all the way from the start. When Clooney entered the scene both him and the android pretty much stole the scene. I am afraid that the Newton girl, for a lot of the time, felt more like a “plot element” than a main character to me.
I have to say that I quite liked the scenes in Paris as well. Sorry guys but I do live in France after all. The Eiffel Tower scenes where quite enjoyable and I do like the touch where they used Mr. Eiffel’s apartment at the top of the tower as a scenery. Actually I am not sure how many people actually know that there is an apartment (now a museum) up there. The stuff about a hidden room and a hidden [naah, that would be a spoiler] beneath the tower is of course truly nonsensical.
So, bottom line, if Disney would not have gone down the line of trying to make a political statement, and I do not care what that statement was except that it was blunt, obvious and unconcealed, then this movie would have gotten another star or two. I cannot justify giving it much lower than what I did since it was, technically speaking, a quite good and entertaining movie. However, movies for children is not the medium to make a statement unless you believe that you are living in a socialist state a ‘la the Soviet Union.
Review by KartiaLilyBlockedParentSpoilers2015-05-23T07:45:16Z
I found this movie to be entertaining and engaging. Kids will enjoy all the adventure and action. Disney did a good job. I did pick up on the environmental undertone of this movie. That through our actions we are heading to our own end. I thought Hugh Laurie had the best end speech near the end of the movie. It was, to me, an honest account of how we are as human beings.
The key phrase in this movie is that our children are our future and that we should never give up or except the path we are on, rather it is up to us to change it to make the world a better place so we may continue to survive and thrive.
I found there to be quite a bit of humor in this film as well and not the kind that went over kids heads to appeal to the grown ups. Granted when I went I didn't see many kids, if any in the theater at the time. That was probably due to the rating of 14+. The word 'hell' is used a few time so I have no doubt it played it's part.
The acting was well done and I would definitely call this a family movie and would recommend this to people.