The future is bright
Disney’s ambitious fantasy film relies on optimism, a plucky heroine and Clooney
Director Brad Bird presents a gorgeously wrought, hopeful future vision in Tomorrowland, infusing the family film with enough entertaining action and retrothemed whiz bang to forgive an awkward opening and third-act weakness.
Written by Bird and Lost’s Damon Lindelof, Tomorrowland is barely based on Uncle Walt’s theme park area, opening instead at the 1964 World’s Fair. Earnest kid inventor Frank Walker (Thomas Robinson, soon to grow into George Clooney) has overcome several bruising setbacks to arrive with his latest breakthrough, a jet pack cribbed together from vacuum cleaner parts.
Frank hopes it will net a prize but scientist-juror David Nix (Hugh Laurie) dismisses him. Frank ends up with something considerably more valuable, including an adventure and friendship with mysterious young English girl Athena, played with otherworldly charm by newcomer Raffey Cassidy.
Fast forward to present day and teen Casey Newton (Britt Robertson).
Brainy and confident, she can barely entertain any outcome other than positive. If something is in peril, say her dad’s NASA engineering job, she’s going to go out and try to fix it, even if it lands her in hot water.
Casey’s discovery of a T-logo pin unleashes the first of a daisy chain of fantasy scenes, delightful to look at and craftily engineered by Bird ( The Incredibles, Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol) to deliver thrills with a touch of old-school Disney whimsy.
Touching the pin instantly transports Casey to a futuristic somewhere, a glorious trick that repeats in quick snatches before plopping her into a wheat field with a city rising in the distance, Bird’s Wizard of Oz- like intention made clear.
It’s a gleaming metropolis, the skies filled with flying trains zooming among transparent forest-filled tubes and divers effortlessly plunging between floating discs of water. But the visit has a time limit and it’s understandable why Casey is heartbroken to leave and desperate to return. Alas, her pin has conked out.
Her search for a replacement sends Casey to Houston and a retro toy shop run by an oddball couple (Kathryn Hahn and Keegan-Michael Key). A visual feast for nerds, it’s jammed with a cornucopia of pop culture goodies and cool oddities (and a few Star Warsitems, the force is strong in this newly Disney-run franchise) that will have audiences engaging in I Spy.
With the help of a new sidekick, Casey goes looking for Frank for a ticket back to Tomorrowland. She finds him, his ramshackle house masking a high-tech fortress packed with Rube Goldberg gadgets and booby traps. Clooney seems delighted to play the curmudgeonly recluse, who possesses a far less blue-sky take on the future than the earnest Casey.
Turns out Casey fit the bill for optimistic futurist and her pin was her entry to the invitation-only Tomorrowland, a place designed for the most creative risk takers, scientists, big thinkers and dreamers. And it was all a con. “What you saw is gone,” says Frank, something Casey interprets more as a challenge than fact.
Getting back there takes nerve and a lot of help from a steampunk rocket ship hidden in the Eiffel Tower. But if it’s going to take an idealist to save the world, Casey is the one for the job. Robertson is ideal as the exuberant, curious teen and she and Clooney work well together onscreen. But it’s Cassidy who truly shines as the ageless Athena, despite inhabiting a strange storyline that doesn’t quite click in the final going.
The same can be said for the confusing climactic showdown, which combines weird science and a preachy lecture on what Earth’s selfish residents have done to the planet. It’s a letdown not even a Tomorrowland-grade optimist could put a positive spin upon.