Damon Lindelof is a dreamer. He cut his teeth writing cheap cop shows and second-tier medical dramas before embarking on the project that would define his career: Lost, network television’s most ambitious serial to ever exist. Though many jumped ship as later seasons got ballsier and whackier, those willing to afford Lindelof and Co. credit found a breed of nerdy, emotionally-driven internal logic just able to justify a spare polar bear here and there. Its raw sentimental baggage overtook the logical bumps in the road. Pathos trumped logos. Converting that distinctly Lindelof style to feature film has proved problematic. This is Lindelof’s flaw and why Tomorrowland fails: we don’t care nearly enough about the characters present to overlook the glaring litany of internal logic issues growing throughout the film like its many glimmering wheat fields. In short, the movie is very, very dumb.

Lost won us over with complex characters who we’d become acquainted with over a period of years. Tomorrowland attempts to stuff them down our throats. And though the stable of characters here is fairly thin, when you stop to think about any single one of them, the circumstances – or as Lostians would know it, the flashbacks – that make them who they are are thin if not entirely hollow. Take Roger for example.

Miscast though George Clooney may be in the role – and believe me, he is dearly miscast – Roger never really stood a chance as a character because once all the puzzle pieces are on the board, he’s still largely without motivation. Not to mention the fact that his emotional core is predicated on a 54-year old maintaining a lifelong crush on 13-year old cybernetic child, Athena (Raffey Cassidy). A central piece of the film involves Roger’s exile from Tomorrowland and once the big bad has spewed his volcano lip “prepare to meet your doom” speech, keen audience members are wont to wonder WTF? (They’re also likely to note the suspicious resemblance of the film’s notable MacGuffin tower to the golf-ballish Epcot Center. There’s so much Disney inbreeding, you’d think it were a Targaryen reunion.)

The villain’s (Hugh Laurie) motivation only makes sense as a cynical speech. Not as actual plot develop.This is because the pieces don’t really ever connect. Instead, Tomorrowland is a sloppy hodgepodge of ideas; a melting pot of excited “but what if…”s that too often have the distinct flavor of piss in the proverbial soup. Lift pinkies all you want but someone appears to have let a Tyler Durden or two on set. I would say it’s the result of too many cooks in the kitchen but Lindelof and director Brad Bird (more on Bird in a minute) are solely responsible for this featherbrained screenplay that purports that the future is what we make of it. (Really? That’s all you’ve got to say?) Nor is it an issue of too few cooks with too little time considering the pair have been hot to trot on this Disney-ride-turned-movie since 2013, going so far as to keep its plot points as top secret as the Breaking Bad series finale. Maybe the mystery they were trying oh-so-hard to conceal is that the movie itself is a shart in the wind.

So I guess this is the part where I should talk about what the movie is in fact about. The characters of Tomorrowland would tell you that the story is about hope and, in truly embarrassing fashion, actually do so, as they turn to the audience in a third-wall-breaking “so we’re going to tell you our story now” address. Clooney’s Frank attempts to frame the story through a doomsday lens while Casey – an optimistic teenage tech protege with a hat obsession and the obnoxiously telegraphed surname of Newton – barks peppy “But there’s still a chance” phrases in the background.

Despite their differences, Casey (Britt Robertson – whom my screening companion appropriately pegged as “the poor man’s Jennifer Lawrence”) must team up with Frank and the robotic Athena in order to save Earth by entering a parallel universe built by 19th century dreamers the likes of Thomas Edison and Nichola Tesla. Frank begins to wax on how the two inventors were always at each other’s throats while those who truly know the rival innovators could surmise that they’d never work in tandem (because Edison’s the worst and Tesla rules.) A plot involving killer robots comes into play – another faulty piece that makes zero sense in retrospect – becomes the Disney execs have to get your blood moving and some truly awful set pieces – particularly one including the Eiffel Tower – casts a shadow of stupid that the film is never able to step outside of.

Now onto Bird. In the past, he’s thrived as a filmmaker because of his ability to imbue a sense of maturity into his family friendly outings. With The Incredibles, he told a tale of misadventure as thrilling as a Marvel movie with the heart and soul of Pixar’s golden age. In Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, he married technological wizardry with sharp wit and daring IMAX spectacle. With Tomorrowland, he’s found the exceedingly boring middle ground between CG and live action in a computer animated “real world” that never looks a lick near great nor real. Rather, they look like concept art for an upcoming Disney park. Where Iron Giant could inspire kids and adults alike and Rataouille held comic treasures for adults that would zip over kids’ heads, Tomorrowland is aimed purely at the kiddies in the audience and I’m unwilling to believe that their awe-stuck won’t be overshadowed by their boredom.

You can pretty much sum up the non-starter that is this wanna-be franchise igniter by going back to Tomorrowland‘s aggressively cloying catchphrase, “You have to feed the right wolf.” You’re likely asking, “What?” and probably will still be once you’ve seen the film. It adds up to something between “you are what you eat” mixed in with the “glass is half ful”l. It’s the kind of eye-rolling second-tier Disney mantra that’s got “trying too hard” spraypainted on it back and front side. Like “fetch” (and this franchise’s future), it’s not gonna happen.

Because when you get down to it, Tomorrowland is very simply a flawed – almost disastrously so – narrative that hedges its clunky storytelling in broad universal ideas (optimism, faith, teamwork). Lindelof has couched laziness in inspiration before but never quite to this degree. Apparently already in attack mode, he’s gone to the extent of prematurely labeling “fanboys” who won’t admit to enjoying his latest feature “too cynical”. Supposedly those on the opposite side of the fence only standing issue is that they are embarrassed by its sense of optimism.

I’m sorry to inform you Mr. Lindelof but you couldn’t be more incorrect. I hold no qualms about a film dreaming up a better tomorrow so long as the film itself is good. This is not a good movie. To go a step further, it’s an extremely disjointed, preachy, shrieky mess; a hackneyed commercial (for another Disney movie, for a Disney ride, for Disney stock) that tauts its flag of inspiration while lacking on almost any innovation; a half-baked sci-fi flunkie that underwhelms at every turn right up to its terrible Colors of Bennetton ending. Now make like a you and get Lost.