Tomorrowland is the kind of big-budget summer event that a young Steven Spielberg once made look easy.

The Disney sci-fi action film is beautiful and utterly original and full of childlike imagination and wonder, all hallmarks of Spielberg’s work in the 1970s and much of the 1980s. Even Tomorrowland’s score by Oscar-winning composer Michael Giacchino bears an uncanny resemblance to that of Spielberg’s favorite film composer, John Williams.

But Tomorrowland is no E.T. — The Extra-Terrestrial or Close Encounters of the Third Kind, immensely entertaining blockbusters that stirred emotions and touched audiences. Rather, it’s surprisingly hollow entertainment — a film with noble intentions and grand aspirations that drags us along for a two-hour adventure that we never really care about.

Tomorrowland stars a miscast Clooney as a reclusive and bitter inventor named Frank Walker and Britt Robertson as a teenage genius named Casey Newton who team up to save the near future from a vague impending disaster.

The film opens with Frank delivering a stern warning about what’s to come, even as an unseen Casey playfully heckles and interrupts his message. Frank tries a different method of delivery, and settles into a narrative that begins with him as a precocious young boy who shows up at the 1964 New York’s World Fair with a revolutionary jetpack that doesn’t entirely work. It doesn’t fly so much as send Frank zipping along uncontrollably only feet off the ground.

A stern man with a British accent by the name of Nix (Hugh Laurie) isn’t impressed with Frank’s scientific achievement, but a young girl named Athena (Raffey Cassidy) is.

After Frank is shooed away by Nix, Athena gives him a passport — a small button with T on it — to the future, Tomorrowland, a gleaming metal world of spires that stretch above the clouds, hovering mass transit, friendly robot builders, and warm smiles. The future, built by the best and brightest minds of the past, looks radiant and hopeful. It’s a trip that changes Frank’s life forever, though not necessarily for the better.

Likewise, Casey is an equally bright teenager in the present day who doesn’t want to change the world, but to save it from catastrophes like global warming, mass starvation, and powerful storms. In the preachy Tomorrowland, optimism is a big theme, a trait that is running in short supply in the here and now and later, we learn, with even less in the decades to come.

It’s Casey's hope for the future that also draws the attention of Athena, who passes along the same button to her she gave to Frank. Merely touching it instantly transports Casey to the fantastical wold of Tomorrowland. In one of the movie's smart-funny details, Casey is still part of her present world when in Tomorrowland, though she can’t see it — including obstacles like walls in her home around her.

Casey’s wondrous adventure is short-lived, however, and so she goes to great lengths to find her way back to the future again. It's on that journey she meets laser-blasting androids trying to kill her, and later, Frank, who’s now middle-aged and holed up in a fortress disguised as a rugged two-story home in the middle of nowhere, like an end-of-the-world prepper.

Frank’s long been banished from Tomorrowland by Nix, the closest the film comes to a villain. But to save the future, he, Casey, and Athena must return to this fantastic place. Once there, however, they realize that it’s not just the past that they have to change.

There’s also so much to the plot that when motives and missions change, it’s often lost in the moment to something else. That lack of direction for the story coupled with the  tame villains weakens the heroes’  task and makes their journey far less compelling. 

Clooney the action hero works fine, but Clooney the nerdy scientist is not believable. The actor is too smooth and polished as an outcast who has turned his back on the world for decades and yet still looks like a rugged Hollywood star.

Robertson carries the film handily until all the plot pieces are in place, and we bond easily with Casey. But then Casey quietly slips into the background as she becomes less consequential, even though we're reminded time and again that she's the one who can save us. Tim McGraw also has a small but significant role as Casey’s father Eddie, a NASA engineer and overly accommodating dad who isn't the intellectual equal of his brilliant daughter.

In what proves to be an essential role, Cassidy has a strong presence onscreen, but Athena never truly captures our interests. When Athena isn’t around, she’s not particularly missed nor is there any curiosity about where she is or what she might be up to.

That’s a significant problem in Tomorrowland because the childhood relationship between Frank and Athena and the unintended damage done to Frank as a result is the heart of the film and comes to define his character and hers. 

Even after the film opens up about their past, its attempts at a meaningful emotional reconciliation between them is more matter-of-fact than stirring. That's odd considering Tomorrowland director-cowriter Brad Bird has a well-established history as a master manipulator of audience reactions. His Iron Giant, the moving story of a boy’s friendship with a building-sized robot, is the animated equivalent of Old Yeller.

Yet Tomorrowland isn’t an easy film to even get into, much less feel, another surprise given how obviously personal the project is to Bird and cowriter Damon Lindelof (Lost, Prometheus, Star Trek Into Darkness). So personal, in fact, they can’t help but lay it on thick with admonishments about the state of our world and the growing toleration for its problems.

Their message is obvious, even though the film isn’t: To reach our Tomorrowland we need to start changing today.

As a filmmaker, Bird has a spotless resume of animated classics, Pixar’s The Incredibles and Ratatouille, and the mega-blockbuster Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol, his first live-action work.Tomorrowland is as visually arresting and creative as any of these films, but it struggles to make us care about any of it other than pleasant CGI eye candy.

J.J. Abrams tried to remake ’70s Spielberg in 2011 with Super 8. Just like Tomorrowland, the weight of its filmmaker inspiration ran heavy through the film: Giacchino even served up a Williams-like soundtrack for Super 8 as well.

Once again,the Spielberg touch was missing in all of it.

Bird, like Abrams, wanted to revive classic Spielberg, and he certainly recreated the look and sound of those films. Those Spielberg movies also reached out and hugged us, while Tomorrowland is a film you want to embrace, but one that never embraces you.

Contact Kirk Baird at kbaird@theblade.com or 419-724-6734.

First Published May 22, 2015, 4:00 a.m.