Tomorrowland Review

Tomorrowland is a movie based on a section of Disneyland. What's next? The Section of Universal Studios Between the Jurassic Park Ride and the Building Across From It: The Movie?

To be fair, I do think that this film could work as an adaptation of that section. That section was supposed to be about the future, and it would have been easy to take the Battleship approach to this movie, and just make anything about the future and slap the Tomorrowland name on it. However, director Brad Bird (The Incredibles, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol) develops a movie with the positive spirit of a Disneyland attraction, even if the rest of the movie isn't as great.

The story revolves around a teenage girl who finds a pin that takes her to an technologically advanced utopia for a moment. She then sets out to find out more about it, and encounters danger along the way. Without spoiling anything, I'll just say that she eventually teams up with George Clooney to take down some bad guys.

Like I said before, this movie has a positive attitude that fits into Disney's traditional style. It has a very strong message of optimism and progress. However, I feel it got preachy at times. There were several moments where they shoved the "think positive" message down the audience's throats.

But in spite of this positivity, there are a few moments where it actually got dark or otherwise questionable for a family movie. In one scene, a group of police officers get vaporized. In another, the main character steals a car from a man who pulled over, believing he ran over a little kid. And probably the worst offenders are the scenes that try to convince you that the world is actually going to end. (Minor spoilers for the rest of the paragraph) Near the end, it is explained that the world is going to end in about a month, due to all of our real life problems, like war, famine, and global warming. This makes it a little to real for a family movie based on Disneyland.

However, this film is still ambitious. It has an original story, and stays entertaining throughout. Also, the few scenes that we see that take place in Tomorrowland look good. It's just a shame that the movie couldn't overcome it's preachiness.

2.5 out of 5 stars