The Future Is Bright In The Time-And-Space Twisting 'Tomorrowland'

Transcript

DAVE DAVIES, HOST:

The early summer blockbuster season begins with Disney's "Tomorrowland," a time and space travel adventure starring George Clooney and Britt Robertson. It's the latest feature by the one-time animator Brad Bird, whose films include "The Iron Giant," "The Incredibles" and "Ratatouille." Film critic David Edelstein has this review.

DAVID EDELSTEIN, BYLINE: Much of Brad Bird's Disney sci-fi adventure "Tomorrowland" is terrific fun, but it's one of the strangest family movies I've seen. Bird's not just making a case for hope. He's making a furious, near-hysterical case against anti-hope - after a perplexing prologue in which George Clooney, in a futuristic suit, addresses an unseen audience, Bird flashes back to perhaps the 20th century's most enduring symbol of technological optimism - the 1964 New York World's Fair.

Clooney's character, Frank Walker, is a preteen science nerd, who's demonstrating his semi-functional homemade jet pack to a British scientist called Nix, played by Hugh Laurie. Nix belittles Frank, but a young girl named Athena, played by Raffey Cassidy, who appears to be Nix's daughter, secretly slips the boy a World's Fair pin that transports him somewhere fabulous.

I can't describe where that is because the fun in "Tomorrowland" comes from being constantly upended. What I can say is that for Bird, the '64 fair is utopia. This was an era when kids made rockets in garages out of vacuum cleaner parts, when a clean, cheerful city of the future inspired awe instead of cynicism. For Frank, anything seems possible.

Frank's not the movie's protagonist, but it's someone cut from the same cloth. Casey Newton is a present-day Florida teen played by Britt Robertson whose dad works for NASA, overseeing the dismantling of rockets that will never be used. A budding rocket scientist, she's so outraged by the failure to support the space program, she sends homemade drones to sabotage the equipment and gets caught. Sprung from jail, she finds in her belongings the same kind of pin that sent Frank on the ride of his life. Every time she touches it, she's in what I'm tempted to call a field of dreams, a vision she tries to share with her angry father, who's driving her home.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "TOMORROWLAND")

TIM MCGRAW: (As Eddie Newton) I am very upset with you.

BRITT ROBERTSON: (As Casey Newton) I get it, you're angry. I understand. But have you ever seen this before? Does it look weird? Don't touch it.

MCGRAW: (As Eddie Newton) Why are you yelling at me?

ROBERTSON: (As Casey Newton) Not while you're driving, Dad. It's dangerous. Just pull over.

MCGRAW: (As Eddie Newton) I swear to God, Case, if you're on drugs, I...

ROBERTSON: (As Casey Newton) I'm not on drugs. All will be explained as soon as you touch this pin.

EDELSTEIN: It's obvious why both Casey and Frank got that pin. They have imaginations that can't be dampened. Casey's dad poses a riddle that becomes the cornerstone of her worldview - in fact, the film's worldview. You have two wolves, one representing darkness and despair, the other light and hope. Which one lives? Casey knows the answer - the one you feed.

After Casey joins forces with the middle-aged Frank, much of "Tomorrowland" is time and space jumping, plus blast-'em-up battles with human-looking robots. But the most vivid thing is the message - a critique of films, books and TV shows in which floods, plagues, robots or nukes wipe out civilization. It's not that Bird is disparaging climate change or other dangers. He's saying our society has become so comfortable with the vision of apocalypse that we're not dreaming up solutions. Maybe Bird's right, and we are too comfortable, even turned on, by plague, flood, road warrior, kids-killing-kids movies. But "Tomorrowland" has a weird side, too. Bird has acknowledged the influence of Ayn Rand's militant individualism. And so the enemies he identifies aren't, say, the people causing climate change. They're the doom-saying collective, like the science teacher who drones on about temperature rise and looks dumbly at Casey when she interrupts to ask, can we fix it? Nihilistic groupthink rules our culture, says Bird. And Casey's positivity makes her a pariah.

Apart from that - a big apart - I loved the movie. I had to dry my tears and let the buzz wear off before I could argue with it. The creator of "The Incredibles," "Ratatouille" and the last "Mission Impossible" film "Ghost Protocol," Bird straddles two worlds - his animation grounded by love of classic cinema, his live-action films liberated by an animator's sense of possibilities.

The cast is fun, too. Though Clooney mugs as much as acts, his comic timing remains superb and his young female co-stars are marvelous. Britt Robertson's jumpy Casey pairs beautifully with Raffey Cassidy's crisp underplaying as the enigmatic Athena. I hope neither actress follows "Tomorrowland" with a plague or "Mad Max" film, though we all know that in Hollywood, movies with no future are the future.

DAVIES: David Edelstein is film critic for New York Magazine.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

DAVIES: On Monday's show, we feature an interview Terry recorded with composer Philip Glass. They talk about his life, including the early days of his career when his music sounded so radical, some audience members threw things at him. One jumped up and started banging on Glass's piano.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)

PHILIP GLASS: Without thinking about it, I stood up and I punched him on the jaw or something. And just like in the comic books, he fell off the stage.

DAVIES: That's Monday on FRESH AIR. Hope you can join us. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.