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Film Review: ‘Tomorrowland’
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In his Pixar triumphs “The Incredibles” and “Ratatouille,” writer-director Brad Bird proved himself not just a wizardly storyteller but also an ardent champion of excellence — of intelligence, creativity and nonconformity — in every arena of human (and rodent) accomplishment. All the more disappointing, then, that the forces of mediocrity have largely prevailed over “Tomorrowland,” a kid-skewing adventure saga that, for all its initial narrative intrigue and visual splendor, winds up feeling like a hollow, hucksterish Trojan horse of a movie — the shiny product of some smiling yet sinister dimension where save-the-world impulses and Disney mass-branding strategies collide.
A sort of “Interstellar Jr.” in which the fate of humanity hinges on our ability to nurture young hearts and minds, the picture runs heavier on canned inspirationalism than on actual inspiration, which won’t necessarily keep it from drawing a hefty summer audience with its family-friendly elements, topnotch production values, Imax rollout, endless tie-in potential and a top-billed George Clooney.
There’s something to be said, of course, for a big-budget studio entertainment sly enough to retain a proper sense of mystery over its story and concept; much of the early buzz around “Tomorrowland” has swirled around the question of what it’s about — and exactly how much it has to do with its namesake neighborhood at Disneyland. With one mercifully brief, tongue-in-cheek exception, scribes Bird and Damon Lindelof (who together conceived the story with Jeff Jensen) avoid exploiting such theme-park attractions as Space Mountain, Star Tours and the dearly departed PeopleMover; if anything, their vision of Tomorrowland draws more heavily on Epcot Center, the ultimate representation of Walt Disney’s guiding belief in science and technology as a force for good in the world.
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