thoughts on Tomorrowland

As a child, Frank Walker (Thomas Robinson) visited a World's Fair at Disney World with a jet pack that he had invented.  It didn't quite work, but his enthusiasm and smarts lead a young girl named Athena (Raffey Cassidy) to give him a pin that transports him to Tomorrowland, a dimension that seems to be an idyllic and technologically advanced future.  More than forty years later, optimistic teenager Casey Newton (Britt Robertson) also receives a pin.  She briefly gets to visit Tomorrowland; when her pin stops working, she does research and finds that a novelty shop in Texas is looking for the pins.  She travels to the shop and learns that the pins were given to optimistic and gifted individuals that could help create a better world; however, Frank (played as an adult by George Clooney) discovered that the world was going to end on a date now less than sixty days in the future, so recruiting was supposed to have ended.  Casey has been brought in as a last hope.

The movie is wild.  We're going back and forth between the past and the present, between Earth as we know it and Tomorrowland.  There are robots that look like humans, impressive technological developments, and a lot of fun details that incorporate current attractions and landmarks (Frank first enters Tomorrowland through the Small World ride at Disney World; Casey later learns that the Eiffel Tower is actually a rocket).  It's, for lack of a better word, neat: lots of fun stuff to see; actors with expressive, almost cartoonish faces; and a dash of Disney cheesiness (Frank gives a speech near the end that basically amounts to, "Let's save the world using science and optimism!").  I enjoyed it quite a bit.  It was fun.  Bring the kids.