I managed to avoid most press about this film, except for some articles floating around protesting the casting of Emma Stone as Allison Ng, love interest to Bradley Cooper and quarter-Hawaiian fighter pilot. I was going to give this film the benefit of the doubt about this casting decision, and was okay with it throughout the first half, given that Stone’s character is obsessed with Hawaiian culture and loves to explain it to Cooper so much that it would almost feel patronizing if the character looked Hawaiian (like, come on, Hawaiians know how to talk about things other than Hawaii).

BUT, the film places such an emphasis on Stone’s culture heritage that you cannot ignore it; at one point she spells out her family background: her mom is Swedish, and her father is half-Chinese and half-Hawaiian. We even get to see a picture of her parents (briefly). That’s where the movie lost me. It is indeed POSSIBLE that pale, blonde-haired blue-eyed Emma Stone was birthed from that combination of parents, but it is not at all PROBABLE. Genes just don’t work that way. One step forward, two steps back guys: if you’re going to write a part for a mixed-race woman, don’t cast arguably one of the whitest women in Hollywood.

Okay, that’s done. Onto the review.

The opening scene of “Tomorrowland” involves one of our leads Frank (played by George Clooney) attempting to set up the film via direct address to the audience. He and Casey (played by Britt Robertson) are shooting a film detailing the problem at hand—a problem they never get around to clearly explaining, because they’re having trouble deciding how to present it. The two characters bicker, because Frank wants to impress the severity of the situation to the audience and Casey wants to focus on the lighter, more optimistic message they have to deliver.

It feels, in retrospect, like the director and the writer fighting with each other, or even the writer fighting with himself. And it’s a good, distilled example of every problem with this film.

A couple weeks back, I said “Avengers: Age of Ultron”, while flawed, was still the best action movie filmgoing audiences were likely to see this season.

Already, two weeks later, I am eating my words. “Mad Max: Fury Road” not only blows “Age of Ultron” out of the water, it raises the bar for both action and science fiction movies to dizzying heights. Believe the hype. “Fury Road” is everything that critics are saying about it, and everything that its criticism implies.

Sometimes I really wonder whether there’s a conspiracy against women in Hollywood that involves making sure the only films with female leads that get produced are shitty. There’s enough good female-led films to refute this theory, but that’s the only reason I can think of that something like “Hot Pursuit” could even be CONSIDERED for development.