Tomorrowland (**½)

Directed by: Brad Bird

Starring: George Clooney, Hugh Laurie, Britt Robertson, Raffey Cassidy, Tim McGraw, Kathryn Hahn, Keegan-Michael Key, Thomas Robinson

Seen: June 3^rd 2015

**½ Out of ****

Tomorrowland is part of a breed of movies that, truly unfortunately, are soon forgotten with somewhat conflicting memories. The conflict comes from the movie promising so much in trailers and delivering so much less. I am in some way still sort of excited about Tomorrowland because the basic premise is so cool: the existence of a parallel universe – created with only the best of intentions – that some kid, apparently from nowhere, discovers a “door” into.

The trailer for Tomorrowland promised a visual feast, and while the movie delivers on that promise, it delivers only marginally more than what the trailers already did. Tomorrowland also tries very hard to deliver on the monstrous expectation it did create in a trailer with pretty much zero story spoilers and a heavy sense of anticipation, but it fails. The movie seems to not really know what to do with its own premise, and while a resolution is reached, it feels shoddy and slightly nonsensical, as if the writers themselves had a really hard time thinking further than their base concept for the movie – a world where everything is simply wonderfully functional and fantastic being endangered in some way.

George Clooney is such a charming actor that even here, playing the gruff and hopeless Frank Walker, the viewer can’t help but root for him immediately. I don’t know if this immediate fondness for Frank was intentional though, as I believe Britt Robertson’s Casey Newton, the lead character who has dreams of a better world, was supposed to bring his mostly broken character back from despair and to rekindle his passion instead of simply and broadly convincing him to help her. Clooney can almost not play an unlikeable character, and this might be why he doesn’t seem to go through a believable or substantial catharsis. Hugh Laurie is presented as a killjoy very early on, and he only gets worse, he can play unlikeable, and he can play it very well.

Tomorrowland looks good, but it delivers a little under two hours of promise which is then let down by a final 20 minutes of bumbling uncertainty about how to end it.  I wanted it to be so much more, but it simply isn’t.