After the cookout, instead of watching the charcoal cool, round up the family and see “Tomorrowland” at The Harbor Theatre. Rated PG, this Disney offering of fantasy, science fiction and theories on space and time, will intrigue and entertain kids from 10 through adult.

As a child of three or four, Casey can identify constellations in the night sky and tells her parents she wants to go up there someday. By the time Casey (Britt Robertson) is a teenager, she is sneaking out of the house late at night to break into NASA to derail the completion of a project her father is working on there. When it's finished, he may be out of a job. But, it is NASA after all, so Casey does get busted.

As Casey is collecting her belongings after being bailed out by her dad, she finds a strange pin among them. She picks it up and WHAM! Casey's in the middle of a wheat field on a very sunny day and in the distance is what appears to be an amazing city.

When she drops the pin, BAM! She's back in the police station. That's one heck of a ticket to ride.

In addition to private admission into an alternate dimension, Casey possesses optimism for the future. While listening to the gloom and doom related by newscasters and teachers at her school, she asks what can be done to change things? Casey will not accept what the adults around her seem all too willing to. Casey is young. Casey still has hope.

George Clooney's character, Frank Walker, knows all about that city. He designed most of it. A child genius, Frank (Thomas Robinson) age 10-ish, brings his prototype of a jet pack to the 1964 World's Fair inventions competition. It sorta works, well, let's just say it all depends on what your definition of “lift off” is. The judge he presents to, Nix (Hugh Laurie), doesn't share Frank's definition and loses interest when Frank says it sorta worked. Nix dismisses Frank in the presence of a young lady, Athena (Raffey Cassidy). Athena is an important character in Frank's life — and the film in general.

Believing in his talent, Athena secretly tells Frank how to catch up again with Nix. What she doesn't say is that to do so he will end up in another dimension where he will stay, with Athena. A place where his ideas and abilities take root and then shape in the place called Tomorrowland.

Athena can see Frank's genius — maybe because she is not a real girl, but a specialized android. Yes, in Tomorrowland robots, androids and all manner of futuristic trappings exist — just not many humans. Humans you see have set Earth on a ironclad path of destruction, and, if they were allowed in Tomorrowland it, too, would be as doomed as Earth — as Nix sees it.

Present day, Casey finds her way to Tomorrowland, Athena, and eventually to middle-aged Frank holed up at the family homestead in the midwest. Athena sends Casey there to recruit a most unwilling Frank back into the fold, so to speak. Frank, Casey discovers, has been monitoring transmissions from Tomorrowland, transmissions that foretell the end of the world — in about 60 days. Casey watches part of a transmission depicting mushroom clouds, frantic crowds, rubble and other frightening images shouts 'no, no!' And Frank's hopelessness meter moves from 100 percent to 99 percent.

Athena, Frank and Casey time travel to the future, to present Tomorrowland.

Armed with the belief that Casey, and others like her can alter the future, they battle androids, multiple dimensions, Nix — and time.

You'll love the young actress playing Athena from her quirky smile to that big Brit accent; Laurie is very entertaining as the ‘bad guy’; and Clooney is always a treat.

This film can be a bit confusing — lots of heady alternative universe and mutliworld theories and such, but the visual effects are stunning; this is Disney after all.

It won't be the best film you see this year, but buckle up anyway — its message about keeping hope alive to transform reality, not just on a personal level, but a global one, is one worth hearing — and seeing.

“Tomorrowland,” plays Friday, May 22 through Thursday, May 28 at 7 p.m. with a 2 p.m. matinee on Sunday, May 24.