Tomorrowland (2015)

** out of ****

I wanted to love this movie – the trailers were so compelling and intriguing that it seemed I absolutely would. Unfortunately, it tries to be too many things, fails to be many of those things, and sends a message that is so blatant it is like being beaten over the head with a dead fish.

George Clooney and Hugh Lawrie get top billing which is pretty comical – Clooney only appears as a narrator until the movie is more than half over, and Lawrie's screen time probably adds up to less that 15 minutes. Britt Robertson is the star of this film, and she is unquestionably the best thing it has going. Robertson is best known as the attempted suicide in “Delivery Man” (2013) and as Angie in the TV show “Under the Dome”.  She absolutely shines in this movie - too bad she didn't have more to shine with.

In “Tomorrowland” Robertson is Casey Newton, one of those teens that is a real gift to the world. She sees everything that humanity has done to screw things up, but rather than simply rail on and on about how it stinks, she wants to affect change to make it better. She is “chosen” by Athena, a recruiter from Tomorrowland who tries to find the best and brightest for a better future for all mankind. She leaves her a trinket that allows her a glimpse of Tomorrowland, an interdimensional place where the geniuses of the world congregate. Casey becomes obsessed with finding a way to get there.

One problem – Tommorrowland has given up on humanity. Having passed some point of no return, the people of Tommorowland have established a 100% certainty that humanity will destroy itself in about two months, and have closed all the gateways between the worlds to make sure they don't get taken down with us. But after Casey finds Frank Walker (Clooney), the one person who knows how to get to Tomorrowland, he discovers that she is kind of like Neo in “The Matrix” - she is the one that can change that 100% certainty of armageddon and give us all a fighting chance.

I understand that this film is meant to be hopeful, to be an anti-theme to all the post-apocalyptic and Dystopian future stuff we find in the movies today. It's “message”, that humanity is destroying itself through it's many questionable endeavors – global warming, nuclear fission, etc. - is just way too “in your face” for my taste. Messages in movies need to have subtlety, not be something you see coming a mile away and end up feeling, “I get it - enough already”.

Of course, it isn't all bad. The performances are excellent (not surprising, considering the quality of the cast) and the special effects are wonderful. The first half of the film does offer some intrigue and you get caught up in it. But when we explore the places the film eventually goes, we find them pretty hollow. I thought that they could have offered a much more interesting look at the alternative universe, because when we got there I just didn't see anything at all appealing about it.

My biggest problem with the film was that it tried to be all things to all viewers. An action movie, a spy-thriller, robots and ray guns, anti-freedom/government control film, revolutionar, family drama.... there is too much going on. A greater focus on the need for action to save humanity, rather than have all these extraneous subplots, would have allowed the message they want to be conveyed to be clearer, more compelling, and less jammed down our throats.

This film isn't awful, but it comes pretty close. They could have done so much more with it that I think it is a disappointment more than anything else.