"Tomorrowland" may be one of the most heartbreaking motion picture releases of 2015—not because it puts the viewer through an emotional wringer, but because it has all of the potential in the world to achieve this very thing, but grievously misses the mark. Inspired by, but not beholden to, the futuristic Disney theme park land, the film shrewdly uses its conceptual ancestry as a jumping-off point for an utterly original story, one dreamt up within the minds of writer-director Brad Bird (2011's "Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol") and co-writer Damon Lindelof (2013's "Star Trek Into Darkness"). There are wondrous sights and individual sequences that inspire mouth-agape awe in "Tomorrowland," and yet these moments (the vast majority relegated to the opening hour) are betrayed by a verbose, heavy-handed screenplay that halts the story's momentum in its tracks and leads to a frustratingly anticlimactic third act. Bird and Lindelof have fallen into the trap of relentlessly telling rather than showing, and what they have to say in scenes anchored by lumbering exposition and tedious, inelegant lecturing proves well-meaning in intention but ultimately trite in execution.
The prologue is dazzling, daring and steeped in richly conceived imagination, the start of what initially looks to be shaping up as an instant Disney classic. 11-year-old Frank Walker (Thomas Robinson) climbs off a greyhound bus at the 1964 New York World's Fair with a not-yet-perfected creation—a jetpack intended to activate flight—he plans to submit at scientist David Nix's (Hugh Laurie) Hall of Invention attraction. Nix turns Frank down, but perceptive young girl Athena (Raffey Cassidy) senses his capabilities and gifts him with a commemorative "T" lapel pin. When Frank climbs aboard one of the boats at the grand opening of the "It's a Small World" ride, his curiosity turns to disbelief when he is instead transported to an idyllic utopia called Tomorrowland, a grandly progressive landscape free from the politics, bureaucracy and greed of modern society.
See Dustin Putman, TheFilmFile.com. for full review
