Tomorrowland

Synopsis: When scientifically-minded teenager Casey Newton (Britt Robertson) discovers a portal  to the future she is sought out by bad people and needs the help of a reclusive inventor, Frank Walker (George Clooney) and an android, Athena (Raffey Cassidy) to save the world.

Director and co-writer of Tomorrowland, Brad Bird, came from a very successful career in animation with Pixar/Walt Disney Pictures then surprised everyone with his skilful 2011 helming of Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol. With this science fiction adventure story he is back in kiddieland but this time mixing the real and the unreal with a thrilling display of visual craftsmanship.

Although the title refers to one of the worlds created for the original Disneyland of the 1950s, Tomorrowland is very much in the tradition of the Steven Spielberg/George Lucas 1980s era of fantasy adventure – a Back To The Future meets Star Wars meets Inner Space SFX-enhanced retro-futuristic story of plucky kids saving the world as we know it - only enhanced by modern film-making technology. Bird and his co-writer, Damon Lindelof (who wrote the screenplay for Star Trek Into Darkness and  the Spielbergian Cowboys & Aliens) have not only given us an engaging, multi-layered story but actually put it in the service of some challenging ideas.

From a charmingly nostalgic opening sequence set at the 1964 New York World's Fair where the Space Age was the buzz of the day it morphs via a theme park ride to a fantastic Jetsons-like future world before it cuts to the main story, set in the modern day, about Casey and her mission to discover the significance of a souvenir medallion from that self-same fair that enables her to visit that same future world to meet the characters from the opening sequence.

Interesting as is the combination of real contemporary environmental issues and fantasy adventure this is where the film strikes a problem.  George Miller cannily set the registers a-ringin’ with his no-brainer stunt-spectacular but it is hard to see where the audience for Bird’s film is going to come from.  It’s essentiallya film for, you know, kids (interestingly the two non-adult protagonists are both female) but whilst it is visually splendid its protracted storyline is complicated and freighted with borderline didactic presentation of its eco-evolutionary themes. Take for example a scene set in the Eiffel Tower in which Frank explains to Casey the relationship between Nicolas Tesla and Thomas Edison as wax dummies of fellow futurists Jules Verne and someone else ( H.G.Wells?, I can’t recall) look on. Then the Tower splits apart and a Verne-ish rocket emerges from underground to blast the trio into the future.  It’s one of the film’s many marvellous flights of fancy but I can’t see the kids queuing up to partake of them (unlike Mad Max, boys at least) .  Contrawise, some adults may appreciate the time-warp references and applaud the film’s gauntlet-throwing spirit but not be particularly invested in the young heroines (Cassidy is an appealing munchkin but Robertson who at 25 gives us a rather generically mannered teen). Clooney does a good job with his character but he plays a kind of comedic second-banana to the girls.

For all its technical sophistication Tomorrowland does manifest a Spielbergian tendency to indulge in raucousness not to mention occasional violence and a general American tendency to overstate its message, but given the vacuous nature of so much big budget action fare it is refreshing to see a film which attempts to use the creative power of cinema for good purposes, something for which it will no doubt be punished.  

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