Review of Tomorrowland (2015) by Chuck Effin' N — 19 Dec 2015

**WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS MINOR SPOILERS**.

Wow, was this a disappointment. Brad Bird is one of my favorite directors, and everything he's made has been overall stellar, that is, until Tomorrowland. There's no beating around the bush, this is simply a bad movie, especially in the story department. This film has one of the most inconsistent stories I've ever seen in a sci-fi movie, especially one from Disney, who brought us the likes of Tron, Flight of the Navigator, and The Rocketeer. The plot has too many conveniences in it to make it at all believable or relatable to the viewer, and the characters are such cardboard cutouts that you can't sympathise with their situations, the character development is completely sporadic, and the humor just plain wasn't funny.

I've heard a lot of people (such as one of my favorite critics, Chris Stuckmann) praise the film for it's original concept. But I disagree, even if the film had an original plot that doesn't make it good. I can say wholeheartedly that I've seen plenty of awful movies with original concepts (Take Shyamalan's Lady in the Water and The Happening as examples), and even with that said I didn't find the film original at all. The story itself gave me way too many flashbacks to Donnie Darko, the robotic villains were literally the same as the agents from The Matrix, and the villain's plan is almost too similar to Ozymandias's plan from Watchmen, that is with a few little differences here or there of course.

While this film may have a lot of problems in it, there are a few thing I did find interesting, such as the film's opening, which I found to be completely engrossing and a great representation of what people in the 1960's though the future would be like. It gave me a similar feeling to the one that the home movie Disneyland Dream gave me when I watched it a few years back. I would have been fine if the whole movie took place at the World's Fair in general. I also thought the acting performances were pretty good for the most part (Particularly Hugh Laurie and Raffey Cassidy), and as always Bird's direction is simply fantastic.

Overall, Tomorrowland was pretty mediocre. I don't really recommend it to anyone as the film's tone is so inconsistent that nobody of any age will be more engrossed than anyone else.

5/10.