Film Review: Awe Factor is Sorely Lacking in ‘Tomorrowland’

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CHICAGO – For a movie all about the awesome power of inspiration, innovation and wonder, “Tomorrowland” has precious little of its own. “Tomorrowland” the title promises a kind of retro futuristic world where anything is possible, but “Tomorrowland” the movie rarely delivers anything approximating joy.

Rating: 2.0/5.0

So what exactly is “Tomorrowland”?  The answer is more than a little convoluted and confusing. It involves essentially an interdimensional gated community where the best and the brightest of the scientific cognoscenti have been allowed to let their inspirations and dreams run wild and create a better world. There are flying cars, jetpacks, giant swimming pools in the sky and the usual suspects, but there’s also something a little off. It’s less a recognizable, or even an inspiring future, than yet another blur of hyperkinetic CGI that’s shiny, slick and completely devoid of anything distinctive. But I guess you run the risk with a movie named after a theme park.    

Britt Robertson is consistently pitch perfect as the teenage daughter of a NASA engineer who hasn’t lost her desire to dream or the desire to fix the things that don’t work. One day she’s slipped a special pin by an android robot in the form of a little English girl with unusual ass kicking skills (Raffey Cassidy). The pin magically takes her to “Tomorrowland,” but only for a limited amount of time. And then she spends the rest of the movie trying to get back there. This leads her to a bitter grizzled inventor (George Clooney) who was influential in the creation of Tomorrowland when he was a boy, and now is obsessed with the end of the world and keeps a doomsday clock in his home.  

Continue reading for Spike Walters’ full review of “Tomorrowland”

Distant Future: Britt Robinson in ‘Tomorrowland’
Photo credit: Walt Disney Studios

Continue reading for Spike Walters’ full review of “Tomorrowland”