Review Roundup: George Clooney Stars in TOMORROWLAND

George Clooney, Britt Robertson, and Hugh Laurie star in Disney's new action-adventure movie, TOMORROWLAND. The movie was directed by Brad Bird and co-written by Bird, Damon Lindelof and Jeff Jensen.

TOMORROWLAND follows the story of a clever, determined teenager and a jaded, former boy-genius as they try to discover the secrets of a mystical land that sits somewhere within time and space known as "Tomorrowland".

TOMORROWLAND stars George Clooney, Britt Robertson, Hugh Laurie, Raffey Cassidy, Tim McGraw, and Kathryn Hahn.

Let's see what the critics had to say!

A. O. Scott, The New York Times: Perhaps "Tomorrowland" should not be blamed for succumbing to the poverty of vision it works so hard to attack. Maybe the forces of negativity are just too strong. But it's also possible that the movie is confused about how to imagine and oppose those forces. False cheer can be just as insidious as easy despair. And the world hardly suffers from a shortage of empty encouragement, of sponsored inducements to emulate various dreamers and disrupters, of bland Universal appeals to the power of individuality.

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: No cynicism, no snark. What! In box-office terms, that usually translates into no chance. Yet Brad Bird's Tomorrowland, a noble failure about trying to succeed, is written and directed with such open-hearted optimism that you cheer it on even as it stumbles.

Justin Chang, Variety: There is, perhaps, something almost perversely admirable about a movie called "Tomorrowland" that spends so little time in Tomorrowland, effectively treating that storied kingdom less as an actual place than as a state of mind. Still, it's hard not not to feel cheated, or to wonder if it was Lindelof, still best known for his work as a showrunner on "Lost," who effectively turned this movie into such an evasive and unsatisfying game of narrative keepaway - one whose final revelations are dispensed in haste, and with a frustrating lack of rigor.

Christopher Orr, The Atlantic: At its best, Tomorrowland, is a clever, good-natured, PG adventure featuring robots and ray guns, jetpacks and Jules Verne. At its worst ... Well, we'll get to that. Suffice it to say that TOMORROWLAND is considerably better than you might expect given that it is named after a region-not even a ride, a region-within Disneyworld's Magic Kingdom and its associated theme parks around the globe.

Lou Lumenick, New York Post: "Mad Max: Fury Road" demonstrated precisely how to present an involving post-apocalyptic story with minimal explanation, but even reams of preachy dialogue and graphics fail to pull together "Tomorrowland" as anything like a coherent moviegoing experience.

Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News: The design is deliberately retro-cool, and the refreshing old-fashioned approach is part of the film's philosophy: Ingenuity, positive thinking and imagination are the best weapons to stop Armageddon - which, in this story, is partly brought about by the wrong kind of wishful thinking. But director Brad Bird ("The Incredibles") fails to anchor the film with any great action scenes, and the movie's worthwhile lessons are told, not shown to us. Like J.J. Abrams' "Super 8" (2011), this film wants to honor a past style but can't quite crack the code to what made it tick.

Todd McCarthy, The Hollywood Reporter: So it has come to this: A big-budget, futuristic, effects-heavy, star-driven, fantasy-oriented, audience-friendly, beautifully made, would-be summer tentpole looks something like a freak, not to mention a semi-risky proposition, because it is not part of a franchise. But that's how it is in the summer of 2015 for Tomorrowland, a sparkling work of speculative fiction (and wishful thinking) that could not be more "Disney" in the old-fashioned sense, but is dominated by its philosophical thrust against social pessimism and disenchantment. Theoretically, the required ingredients for a big summer hit are mostly present and accounted for, but the considerable question remains as to whether the mass audience of the moment is ready to embrace an inventive but less overwhelmingly Marvelous adventure fantasy than is the current norm.

Steve Rose, The Guardian: It's a brave family movie that invests in high-budget thrills without the safety-net of a franchise brand, mows down a small child with a pickup truck (it's OK, she's a robot), and subjects us to the sight of Hugh Laurie in black leather jodhpurs. But bolder still is Tomorrowland's sincere attempt to jump-start humanity's technological optimism, which it reckons stalled with the decline of the space race with potentially planet-threatening consequences. Whether or not that's the answer to the planet's current problems, director Brad Bird deserves praise for packing such big ideas into such an accessible, rip-roaring, retro-futurist adventure.

Jane Horwitz, The Washington Post: "Tomorrowland" starts out as a fizzy, fun adventure but morphs into a long, confusing clunker, weighed down by its save-the-world message. For kids 8 and older who love science and fantasy, the movie still merits a sit-through. But parents can expect some squirming and big questions about space-time portals.

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: What this film eventually chooses to be is a flat-footed celebration of the dreamers and doers who will make our future bright. It's a polemic in favor of positive thinking.

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