I really wanted to love this movie. The film starts off with a bang, the first act sees us at the 1964 World's Fair, we hear the song from Carousel of Progress, and get to take a ride on It's a Small World. Overwhelming synergy overload aside, I loved the first half of this film. You really couldn't guess what was coming next, it did a great job of setting up the stakes, and the sequences were fun and clever. However, somewhere after George Clooney's character starts to reveal details about the real Tomorrowland, and his own childhood experiences with a child-shaped android, the film takes a nosedive for me. It becomes more and more clear that we're not going to get a satisfying conclusion and the film just sort of ends, because it wants to. The message is beautiful: to keep hope alive and to never give up on a bright future. But the movie tells us to be inspired, rather than actually inspiring us. They save the day at the end, but it doesn't feel organic, more like they do it because the film's running time was running out. Maybe there's thirty minutes on the cutting room floor that help square it away. I love Brad Bird. I love his directorial style and the messages he tries to convey. I just wish this film did a better job of that and had a better climax.

Seeing the movie opening weekend, they gave us a Tomorrowland pin and E-tickets for the film, reminiscent of the old style ride tickets from Disneyland when it first opened. While I absolutely adore the pin and everything it represents, it's the epitome of everything wrong with this film: They get the props, production design, and feeling right, but without a good and memorable story to hold it up.

3 Stars (out of 5)