Tomorrowland
Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures | Release Date: May 22, 2015 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
60
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 48 Critic Reviews
Positive:
28
Mixed:
19
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
90
Village VoiceAmy NicholsonMay 19, 2015
Bird layers on plenty of dazzle... But his heart is what keeps the story motoring and the ending is perfectly engineered, including a coda that encourages all of us to try harder. Read full review
90
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyMay 17, 2015
All hands on both sides of the camera do outstanding work. Clooney seems to be enjoying himself thoroughly as the old grump whose creative flame hasn’t been entirely extinguished, but it falls more to Robertson to carry the film, which she does with great energy and appeal. Read full review
83
IndieWireGreg CwikMay 17, 2015
Bird has crafted a gorgeous world rife with creativity and inventive images. A Spielbergian sense of candid awe and wonder permeates each scene with a nostalgic edge. Read full review
80
CineVueEdward FrostMay 21, 2015
An amalgamation of Disney's heritage, current status and future enterprises that starts in the evocatively rendered 1964 World's Fair, Tomorrowland is a refreshing and well-intentioned standalone piece that revels in a creatively manufactured appropriation of the conglomerate's existence. Read full review
80
Total FilmPaul BradshawMay 18, 2015
If you’re willing to let a few things slide, this is one of the best family blockbusters in years. Clooney and Robertson (literally) soar, the madcap action always feels grounded and Bird’s world is bursting with visual invention. Read full review
80
EmpireOlly RichardsMay 18, 2015
Bird and Lindelof have thrown everything they have at this film and, aside from a pause for breath at the end, they’ve made something funny, surprising and packed full of wonder. Read full review
80
The GuardianSteve RoseMay 17, 2015
Director Brad Bird deserves praise for packing such big ideas into such an accessible, rip-roaring, retro-futurist adventure. Read full review
75
Charlotte ObserverLawrence ToppmanMay 28, 2015
The movie leaves a bunch of questions unanswered but rockets ahead in such entertaining style that I scarcely minded. Read full review
75
USA TodayBrian TruittMay 21, 2015
A spectacular ride for most of it, and while you're a little let down at the end, you kind of want to jump back on and do it all over again. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleMay 21, 2015
The movie is saying something worth hearing about the place the future holds, the concept and promise of it, in human existence. It’s an attempt to wrest that vision from the narrow fantasies of doom-peddling action filmmakers. That’s an attempt worth making. Read full review
75
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallMay 21, 2015
There's a surprising number of salient, even revolutionary notions about human nature and intelligence throughout, none fully explored but enough to make the running time at least 20 minutes too long. Read full review
75
Miami HeraldRene RodriguezMay 21, 2015
Tomorrowland is a crazy, disjointed mess. But it’s the good sort of crazy, and it’s the sort of mess you want to lose yourself in. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneChristopher BorrelliMay 21, 2015
At times Tomorrowland plays like such a throwback to those sweetly naive, low-rent, live-action Disney matinees of the '60s and '70s, George Clooney is like a Fred MacMurray with gravitas, gruff and grizzle, predictably warming up to a young dreamer (a terrific Britt Robertson) of cheer and vision. Read full review
75
RogerEbert.comMatt Zoller SeitzMay 19, 2015
If you treat Tomorrowland mainly as an immense cinematic theme park that unveils a new "ride" every few minutes—just as Bird's last feature, "Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol" was mainly a series of action scenes—its weaker aspects won't be deal-breakers. Read full review
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinMay 21, 2015
It’s so smart, so winsome, so utterly rejuvenating that you’ll have to wait until your eyes have dried and your buzz has worn off before you can begin to argue with it. And you should argue with it — even if you had a blast, as I did, and want to see it again with the kids, as I do — because it’s a major pop-culture statement with all sorts of implications, both vital and nutty. Read full review
70
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzMay 21, 2015
Tomorrowland may not fully reach the heights for which it strives, but it has a good time trying. Read full review
70
SalonAndrew O'HehirMay 21, 2015
The wonder of Tomorrowland – and with all its flaws and its hidebound Disney formula, it really is wonderful – is that Bird’s tale of nostalgia for the lost future manages to recapture some of that original, optimistic meaning without losing sight of the newer and darker one. Read full review
70
Screen DailyTim GriersonMay 17, 2015
George Clooney and newcomer Britt Robertson are solidly compelling, but Tomorrowland remains only a moderate success, its ingenuity, wit and enormous heart too often at odds with a ho-hum story and tentpole conventionality that the film tries so hard to transcend. Read full review
67
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerMay 22, 2015
Tomorrowland is a rather sweet excursion into speculative sci-fi, and, wonder of wonders, it doesn’t even seemed primed for a sequel. But this movie about the thrill of the visionary is, alas, mostly earthbound. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenMay 20, 2015
There’s much to applaud and much to knock in this Disney action adventure. Tomorrowland breaks the mold and becomes something quite original, while at the same time it ballyhoos its inspirational message to an extent that deadens the narrative. Read full review
67
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd May 19, 2015
Bird stages the PG mayhem with his usual grasp of dimension and space, his gift for action that’s timed like physical comedy. He keeps the whole thing moving, even when it begins to feel bogged down by preachiness and sci-fi exposition. Read full review
65
TheWrapInkoo KangMay 17, 2015
Tomorrowland is a globe-trotting, time-traveling caper whose giddy visual whimsies and exuberant cartoon violence are undermined by a coy mystery that stretches as long as the line for “Space Mountain” on a hot summer day. Read full review
63
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaMay 21, 2015
Unlikely to be remembered in decades to come - or even in months to come, once the next teenage dystopian fantasy inserts itself into movie houses. Read full review
63
Rolling StonePeter TraversMay 21, 2015
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. Read full review
63
Boston GlobeTy BurrMay 21, 2015
The thing barely makes a lick of sense. Rapturous on a scene-by-scene basis and nearly incoherent when taken as a whole, the movie is idealistic and deranged, inspirational and very, very conflicted. Read full review
63
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliMay 21, 2015
Tomorrowland is an interesting collage of moments and ideas in search of a strong narrative and a coherent ending. Read full review
63
Movie NationRoger MooreMay 20, 2015
Bird cooks up lots of eye candy, but the dazzle wears off, and nobody really connects emotionally. Read full review
63
Slant MagazineChristopher GrayMay 20, 2015
In Brad Bird's film, the way forward is backward, on a path that stumbles into misplaced nostalgia and dicey humanism. Read full review
60
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranMay 21, 2015
Tentpoles are rarely guilty of overreaching, but Tomorrowland has a tendency to feel out of control, a film that is finally more ambitious than accomplished. Read full review
60
The TelegraphTim RobeyMay 21, 2015
Tomorrowland is half a day having all the fun of the fair, and half a day paying for it back in the classroom. Read full review
60
New York Daily NewsJoe NeumaierMay 20, 2015
This fantasy adventure lacks focus when it should be laser-sharp, and stumbles when it could soar. Read full review
60
Time Out LondonMay 18, 2015
When it puts down its copy of ‘Political Philosophy for Dummies’ and focuses on character and action, Tomorrowland is a blast. Read full review
58
HitfixDrew McWeenyMay 17, 2015
Tomorrowland may be well-made, but whether you're talking about it thematically or dramatically, this is a profoundly mixed bag. Read full review
50
LarsenOnFilmJosh LarsenSep 28, 2022
All in all, Tomorrowland suffers from the quality that defines many of its characters: outsized vision and ambition. Read full review
50
The New YorkerAnthony LaneMay 28, 2015
Tomorrowland is a bright and pliable sci-fi thriller that stiffens into a sermon. Can’t it just be fun? Read full review
50
NPRBob MondelloMay 23, 2015
Tomorrowland is designed, just like its theme park namesake, to celebrate optimism. Read full review
50
SlateDana StevensMay 22, 2015
Tomorrowland is a highly original, occasionally even visionary piece of sci-fi filmmaking, but that doesn't necessarily make it a good movie. Read full review
50
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternMay 21, 2015
The whole film is an argument about nothing less than the future — can we fix our troubled world or not? But for all of its vaulting ambition, its sumptuous eye-feasts and its leapings back and forth in space and time, Tomorrowland never comes together as coherent drama in the here and now. Read full review
50
Washington PostStephanie MerryMay 21, 2015
Maybe the ultimate goal of Tomorrowland remains obscure because once you know where the story is headed, you realize it’s a familiar tale. The movie can conjure up futuristic images, but the story is nothing we haven’t seen before. Read full review
50
New York PostLou LumenickMay 20, 2015
The film never adds up to the sum of its parts, effectively a two-hour trailer for a movie I’d still be interested in seeing. Read full review
50
The DissolveTasha RobinsonMay 19, 2015
Tomorrowland comes across as a grinning rictus of a movie, a desperate door-to-door evangelist trying to force its foot into the door and push its salvation by any means possible. Read full review
50
The PlaylistRodrigo PerezMay 19, 2015
Steeped in a nostalgia that often feels borrowed and canned—the space-age era impulses of progress and possibility from the 1950s and ‘60s—Tomorrowland asks that you never give up or lose hope, literally and figuratively, over and over again, to the point that the movie has little else to say. Read full review
50
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperMay 18, 2015
Brad Bird’s Tomorrowland is a great-looking, old-fashioned, at times soaring adventure ultimately brought down by a needlessly convoluted plot, some surprisingly casual violence and heavy-handed lectures about how we’re our own worst enemy and we’re going to destroy the planet if we don’t get it together. Read full review
50
VarietyJustin ChangMay 17, 2015
The glaring failure of Tomorrowland is that its central premise — children are the future — is almost completely negated by the preachiness of the execution and the clumsiness of the storytelling. Read full review
42
Portland OregonianMarc MohanMay 21, 2015
Multiplex audiences can choose over the next few weeks between two starkly different views of the future. The remnants of humanity struggle for survival in the brutal world of "Mad Max: Fury Road," while Tomorrowland offers an optimistic retro-future paradise full of jetpacks and robots. Me, I'll take post-apocalyptic desert wasteland over soulless corporate utopia any day of the week. Read full review
40
The New York TimesA.O. ScottMay 21, 2015
Its idea of the future is abstract, theoretical and empty, and it can only fill in the blank space with exhortations to believe and to hope. But belief without content, without a critical picture of the world as it is, is really just propaganda. Tomorrowland, searching for incitements to dream, finds slogans and mistakes them for poetry. Read full review
40
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottMay 20, 2015
The problem is, the closer our heroes come to their goal, the weaker the story becomes. What we're left with is a film that gets off to a ripping good start, but which -- given how little time is actually spent in the fanciful world after which the whose shebang is named -- ends up feeling like a cinematic bait-and-switch. Read full review
38
St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe WilliamsMay 21, 2015
Disney’s gimmick of naming movies for its theme-park attractions crashes and burns in Tomorrowland, a here-and-now caper that will confuse children, bore adults and offend anyone who’s ever taken a science class. Read full review
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