Boy Genius Archives - Sean Kelly On Movies

A teenage girl finds a pin that leads her to a futuristic city in Tomorrowland. Casey Newton (Britt Robertson) is a troublesome teen, who is arrested when she is caught trying to sabotage the deconstruction of the former Cape Canaveral NASA launch site. When she makes bail, Casey finds a pin, which provides her with a vision of a futuristic city. Wanting to get to the city, Casey tracks down Frank Walker (George Clooney), who as a kid was recruited to the city by Athena (Raffey Cassidy) and was acquainted with the city’s leader David Nix (Hugh Laurie). Casey and Frank race to return to “Tomorrowland” and save the world from a cataclysmic future. Brad Bird (The Incredibles, Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol) directs the latest film that is based on on a Disney theme park attraction. As I’m not the most familiar with the Tomorrowland theme park, I can’t really tell what elements were directly used in the plot of the film. From what I gather, the theme park was merely used as a jumping off point to tell this fantastical story about this futuristic utopia, which was secretly created by the world’s greatest inventors and can only be accessed with the special pins. Even though he gets top billing in the film, I would be hard pressed to say that George Clooney’s Frank Walker was the true protagonist of the film, even though the first act of the film focuses on Frank as a boy visiting the 1964 New York World’s Fair and being recruited to come to the city. Other than some narration scenes, Clooney isn’t really seen for much of the first half of the movie. Instead, the story primarily focuses on Britt Roberson (probably best known from TV’s Under the Dome) as Casey Newton, who is an incredibly intelligent teenager, who idolized her NASA engineer of a father (Tim McGraw). Much of Tomorrowland involves futuristic fantasy, whether it involves jetpacks or fights against evil androids. However, behind all of this fantasy is an environmental message involving Earth’s own future. An early scene shows the teachers in Casey’s school teaching doom and gloom, surrounding war and global warming. However, even though they keep preaching this horrible future, they do not really have anything to say about what can be done to change it. In a fairly roundabout way, this is the ultimate message of Tomorrowland. Altogether, I have to say that Tomorrowland was a pretty enjoyable family-friendly futuristic adventure. ★ ★ ★ ★ | LIKED IT