There is far more wrong than right with Disney’s Tomorrowland, but there is one bright, gleaming asset to the film that should be taken into as much consideration as its (many, many) setbacks. It’s been noted that apocalypse fatigue has set in among moviegoers who are beginning to wonder how many times they can witness the deaths of thousands of unseen people in entertainment before it becomes meaningless, and director Brad Bird deserves credit for calling out the world’s numbness to disaster in his new live action Disney film.
Bird’s enthusiasm for layered storytelling is infectious, and it’s refreshing to see the man behind such thematically rich family entertainment as The Iron Giant and The Incredibles still trusts the intelligence of children to understand conflict on a deeper, more existential level than bad guys versus good guys. It’s vital to Bird that the world sees critical thinking and questioning what you’ve been told as preferable to punching the baddie until he gives up, a crucial lesson for children and other filmmakers alike.
If only the film’s premise, execution and message lived up to its good intentions. The premise is that there is an interdimensional city known as Tomorrowland, a kind of Disney-fied Galt’s Gulch that is created by earth’s greatest minds who pursue their life’s ambitions free from political, financial or social considerations. The city’s decline is somehow tied in with the earth’s impending doom, a riddle that needs to be solved by whiz kid Casey Newton (Britt Robertson) and jilted, exiled Tomorrowland recruit Frank Walker (George Clooney). The execution centers on boring the audience to death with exposition about the history and significance of Tomorrowland for the first hour, then finally arriving and immediately embarking on an entirely new plot thread that has almost nothing to do with everything we were told before. And finally, the message is that complainers like George Orwell need to stop being such negative Nancies and start fixing things, darnit. (This is not an exaggeration; early in the film, Casey’s English teacher is speechless while waving a copy of 1984 after she asks “Well, what can we do about it?”)
Even if you look past the ideology—which Bird and co-writer Damon Lindelof make nearly impossible, as they tie every aspect of it to their vision of a kinder, softer reading of Ayn Rand—Tomorrowland is an extremely strange and uneven film with a story better suited to 90 minutes than 130.
Bird has no idea what to do with his characters beyond making them mouthpieces, leading to uneven performances by an otherwise terrific cast. The two leads feel like they’re pulled from different movies; Robertson is a delight as her interpretation of Casey as energetic and intelligent falls into none of the pitfalls awaiting intellectually engaged young women in fiction, while Clooney’s spastic, spiteful grump routine hits every familiar note. This same fate befalls the city of Tomorrowland itself, which never rises above a pretty metaphor and feels uninhabited due to muddled world building and uneven production design.
To be clear, it is fully possible to enjoy a film that you disagree with politically. The same themes of society securing its own doom by holding back its greatest assets was a crucial part of The Incredibles, but it was a springboard to a more relatable story rather than a foundation for an objectivist fairy tale. The most interesting thing it has to say is that one can go Galt (deprive society of your contribution as a Nietzschean übermensch) out of magnanimity rather than out of spite, but the only way to enjoy Tomorrowland is to agree with its message or actively ignore it. If you’ve visited Epcot, seen Clooney’s performance in Intolerable Cruelty and struggled to reason with a college friend who just discovered Atlas Shrugged, you’ve already experienced Disney’s Tomorrowland. Come to think of it, Galt’s Gulch does sound like a fun roller coaster.
Playing this week
The Age of Adeline
Avengers: Age of Ultron
Ex Machina
Far from the Madding Crowd
Hot Pursuit
Mad Max: Fury Road
Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2
Pitch Perfect 2
Poltergeist
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
244-3213
