TOMORROWLAND is a kids movie aimed straight at aging adults.

I know. You’re thinking So? Doesn’t that describe every summer movie nowadays? It sorta does, but very few movies are this blatant about it. You know those people who complain that there are no more gosh wow space adventure stories, because everything in entertainment is grim and dour and apocalyptic, and no one has hope for the future? This is the movie for them; it even includes silver rocket ships and jet packs.

It even makes all that grim/dour/apocalyptic entertainment a plot point: those writers/game makes, and filmmakers are a major cause of the END OF THE WORLD!

That’s right. The world is going to be destroyed, but instead of trying to make things better, they’re making totally awesome Mad Max movies. If only people were trying to fix our problems instead of being pessimistic all the time!

Enter our heroes, George Clooney, plus a 25-year-old teenager, and finally a truck driving, kung fu robot in the form of a 12-year-old girl. Clooney’s role is to a) grump a lot b) explain the plot and c) finally believe in our hero. The not-teen is there to protag her little heart out, and the 12yo is a pure wish-fulfillment character for little kids. Like I said, she drives. A lot. And she lays the kung fu on some grownup robots, complete with power poses.

It’s… weird to see a children’s movie that clearly wishes we could return to an atomic age aesthetic, like telling your nieces to shut up about Katniss and read some Heinlein juveniles.

But to say that it’s a weird jumble is not to say that it doesn’t have fun moments. It does. And yeah, I’m in favor of positivity and a focus on solutions rather than cynicism in real life. That’s real life! (Art and entertainment is a different matter.) So the film ends up with a (ham-handed) message that I appreciate. Like a lot of movies nowadays, there are terrific set pieces, but they don’t come together in a sensible way, even by the standards of the summer movie.

Kid’s might like it, though.

I’ll make this brief because the family is heading off to see a Georgia O’Keefe show this morning.

Last night was date night, so I did what I usually wouldn’t: went to the sneak preview with my wife. Sadly, my brilliant idea for dinner beforehand was ruined when we discovered the shawarma place was closed for remodeling. Instead, we ate at an Australian/New Zealand pub, in honor of the Australian actors we were about to see.

It’s a good movie but not a great one, even by the standards of a blockbuster action movies. The whole thing feels like it’s been stuffed to the breaking point: you get the six main Avengers, plus the Maximoff twins, plus the Vision, just as the trailers suggest. What they held back from the publicity is that the movie is also full of the supporting characters from the previous individual movies. As it should be, really.

And considering how full the movie feels, it’s amazing that they’ve managed to give the leads their own (tiny but effective) story lines, sandwiched between huge, destructive action set pieces. And there are so many great actors in this thing that they actually manage to sell the personal crises and miniscule human moments, even while wearing, say, a skin-tight black suit. And Bettany is excellent as The Vision.

There are some unfortunate choices, too, mostly around Ultron. Who’s idea was it that his metal lips would move when he talked? I don’t want to say much more, because spoilers. There were also several scenes that made me think That would make no sense to anyone who missed the first movie.

Still, the pieces seem to be much larger than the whole. I remember leaving the first Avengers movie feeling wow-ed by what they accomplished. This time, I loved all the individual sequences but they didn’t feel as though they added up to a truly satisfying whole. However, I plan to see it again, hopefully with my son. We’ll see how I feel about it then.

Added later: I forgot to mention that there’s a single mid-credits scene but nothing at the very end, so you don’t have to sit through the whole endless scroll of digital artists or whatever.