Film Review - Tomorrowland (2015)

Tomorrowland is directed by Brad Bird and stars Britt Robertson as Casey a young girl who dreams of the stars and one day finds a mysterious pin amongst her belongings when she is released from jail after being arrested, when she touches the pin she sees a strange place called Tomorrowland and her quest for more answers to this place leads her to Athena (Raffey Cassidy) and the reclusive scientist Frank (George Clooney.)

Now I went into this hopeful for a fun and exciting ride as I liked the look of what I saw in the preview for the film and I also like Clooney despite the Monuments Men being a near complete disaster so could Clooney return to form and could Bird deliver on his promise of a fun and exciting ride not unlike what we normally see at the movies?

Sadly neither of them could as this was a very boring movie to sit through and the reasons are three:

- The first is that the characters here are so unlikeable to watch as all they do throughout the entire film is fight and argue and as a result you couldn't care less about what happens to them and after a while you just keep thinking "WILL YOU ALL PLEASE JUST SHUT UP" then again Bird did this in the Incredibles where all they did was yell at each other the entire time and I'm sorry but this is not character conflict it is annoying and I hate it when it's done for cheap effect.

- The second is that the story feels like a bad pastiche of the first Terminator film and Joe Johnston's 1991 underrated adventure flick the Rocketeer and there was a moment where I thought Athena was going to do the Kyle Reese exposition on the run moment from the first Terminator film and combines with the jetpack flying and lightly sprinkled adventure the Rocketeer had and frankly its a bad combination as after a while you just sit there bored by it all especially during the action sequences which looked exciting in the trailer but here are just dull as all heck to watch primarily as your just not invested in either the story or the characters.

As for the main cast well Clooney is miscast as Frank and if ever there was a role destined to be played by Tom Hanks it was this one as Hanks would've made you invested in Frank's arc and brought some heart to the role as well, Robertson and Cassidy are okay but are also fairly one note while Hugh Laurie pretty does the same cranky man routine he did as Dr House but without that character's down deep charm and effectiveness to solve the problems.

- And lastly the visual effects are really dull to look at and again this comes back to the lack of interest I had in this film, at first it reminded me of Cloud City but then the fake look of it all started to seep in and coming off the back of Mad Max which at least had some real stunt work and vehicles well I now appreciate that film some more despite being middle of the road on it after seeing this.

Look it could be easy to blame Damon Lindelof the co-script writer for this turkey given his poisonous track record so far but I'm not going to for Brad Bird is the man responsible for this mess given he's the director and he and he alone must take the blame for this borefest, rent the Rocketeer instead, 1 out of 5.