Tomorrowland Review

Today we live in a day of sequels, remakes, and adaptations. Constantly it feels like Hollywood has lost all of its imagination because everything that shows up on the big screen came from somewhere else. No originality. My retort to that is that there are plenty of original ideas out there. People just don't care about them when they do come out. So who's fault is it really that the number of sequels, remakes, and adaptations is at an all time high? That aside, it is refreshing when the weekend's biggest new release is actually an original idea that people are excited about enough to pay money for. And by original, I mean a movie that's not a sequel, remake, or adaptation because you could play devil's advocate here and say that there really is no original story that has never been told in some way. That's beside the point, though. We're here to talk about Tomorrowland, an original movie by Disney.

In addition to being an original idea, the other thing that really makes me happy is the fact that the trailers and advertising for this movie was done right. So many movies these days feel the need to spoil the movie in the trailers to get people interested. It's frustrating. I don't want to watch a trailer and feel like I don't need to see the movie because I now know the whole storyline after watching the trailer. Yes I'm looking at you recent trailers for Jurassic World and Terminator Genisys. Disney definitely did things right with Tomorrowland because the trailers didn't give anything away, yet they made the movie look intriguing. Going into the movie, I literally knew nothing about the movie other than Britt Robertson's character finds this pin that shows her this magical place and tries to get George Clooney's character to take her to this place. Because of this excellent advertising, I am going to try extra hard in this review to not tell you anything about the plot, which makes this hard because there is a lot of things that could be said that I want to say that I'm just not going to. So I will leave it at that. There is this place called Tomorrowland. Britt Robertson wants to go there. She tries to get George Clooney to take her there. Done.

Now it's time to be super vague about everything that happens while giving you my experience with it. First and foremost is that this movie is a lot of fun. I really had a blast with it. I won't tell you why I had a blast. You're just going to have to trust me on that. But it's not just me that had a blast with this. Given the fact that this is a PG-rated family friendly movie made by Disney, there were a lot of kids in the theater with their parents. Based on my observations, the kids were having a lot of fun with this as well, so this is a movie that both kids and adults can go to and have a fun time with. With it being Memorial Day weekend, if you need a good time with the family, this is definitely an excellent choice. In addition to being a fun movie, this is also a very pretty movie. I did this weird thing where I saw the movie in IMAX (long story - I don't usually fork out the big bucks for IMAX) and that made it even prettier watching it on a huge screen. But if you aren't feeling rich, a normal screen is just fine.

Another thing I really liked about the movie was all the characters. Our main characters were very well written and thus I like the character progression that they all went through. It made for an even better experience. Helping with this of course was great acting. Britt Robertson was playing a teenage girl. Britt Robertson is 25. Yet she did a great job of acting as a teenage girl both in looks and in mannerisms. And of course George Clooney did a great job as he... uhhh... almost always does. Just as long as you pretend that Batman and Robin movie didn't exist. We're all over that, right? Now there are a few more actors that I really need to mention. First I'll mention in passing that Hugh Laurie and Tim McGraw were both in the movie. McGraw was a minor character, but the scenes he was in he did great. Hugh Laurie was a major character of whom I'm going to say nothing about other than I liked him. But there is another person that I really need to give a whole lot of praise as she was probably my favorite character in the whole movie and that is the adorable 13-year-old actress named Raffey Cassidy. I'm also not going to say what she did in the movie, but she had just as much screen time as Britt and Clooney did, if not more. Putting so much trust in her was a bold move, but it worked out fantastically. I hope we see a lot more of her in the future.

Up to this point I hope I've shown you that I do think this is a really fun movie worth watching. Reading and watching reviews before I went in, there was one huge major gripe that it seemed everyone was mentioning. I told myself that I wasn't going to be the person that just said the same thing as everyone else just to go with the flow. But alas that gripe ended up bothering me as well. This is the third act of the movie. I told you I that I had a lot of fun with the movie and that's true. But there did come a point where the fun died down quite a bit and it was a bit frustrating because what happened at the end didn't seem to fit in with the movie that well. I mean, the whole thing was shrouded in mystery as far as what is going on and I don't know what my solution would be to fix it, but there was just certain aspects that didn't please me that much. I'd elaborate, but that would require spoiling the movie and I'm not going to do that. However, I will say that a lot of critics are being a bit harsh when it comes to this. This slightly uninteresting part doesn't ruin the movie. It's still fun and worth seeing.

So in the end, I really did enjoy Tomorrowland. If you are looking to go out to the theaters over Memorial Day weekend with your family, this is definitely a great option especially since family audiences haven't been treated to much worth seeing lately, so this is definitely a refresher. It's a beautiful movie. Well shot. Well directed by Brad Bird. I hope he continues to do more with live action as well as animation. The acting is good. The story is fun. Since it is kinda loosely based off a a ride at Disneyland, I deem it appropriate to say that the movie is quite a fun ride throughout. Yes, the ending leaves a bit to be desired and it's not the most epic piece of cinema that you'll see this year, but if you skip this movie you'll definitely be missing out. This is a win for Disney. My grade for Tomorrowland a 7.5/10.