Avis Metacritic

Here's a technological sound-and-light show that is sensational and brainy, stylish, and fun.

The story is simple, as befits a movie that's more about visual flash, technical bravura, and ideas than plot and character development. TRON turns into an action-oriented endeavor, with characters attempting to make their way through the video game inspired landscape of the mainframe to the goal that will achieve victory.

Tron's thematic overtures have a certain silly charm, enhancing rather than detracting from its core virtues. What really makes Tron work is an astonishing sense of design.

Jeff Bridges seems to be the only one having fun, playing a videogame designer who gets sucked into a Day-Glo world of his own creation. It’s like Alice in Wonderland acted out on a kids’ Lite-Brite toy.

Dazzling but lightweight epic about a young scientist kidnapped into a computer, where he battles an evil master control program that runs the place like an electronic fascist. Has some tantalizing moments, as when computer-generated characters debate the religious question of whether users really exist. In the end, though, it's squarely in the old Walt Disney tradition of anthropomorphizing everything in sight, only this time it's circuits (instead of cuddly animals) that look and talk like people.

It's intelligently conceived (on a visual level, at any rate) and largely good fun. Steven Lisberger, an East Coast animator, directed the visuals, combining the actors and computer graphics with satisfying results.

It is beautiful -spectacularly so, at times - but dumb. Computer fans may very well love it, because Tron is a nonstop parade of stunning computer graphics, accompanied by a barrage of scientific-sounding jargon. Though it's certainly very impressive, it may not be the film for you if you haven't played Atari today.

A sympathetic but slightly clumsy rewrite of The Wizard of Oz, with a whizkid programmer (Bridges) trapped inside a computer world. The film boasts some impressive computer-generated animation, but for all its inventiveness, Tron never reaches a level of excitement commensurate with its effects budget.

Tron is loaded with visual delights but falls way short of the mark in story and viewer involvement. Steven Lisberger has adequately marshalled a huge force of technicians to deliver the dazzle, but even kids (and specifically computer game freaks) will have a difficult time getting hooked on the situations.

The best visual design in the world doesn't mean a thing unless there's someone around with a rudimentary sense of story. Jeff Bridges, playing the human hero sucked into the machine, has to carry the film's entire burden of charm and appeal; he seems to have freaked out under the strain, turning in some surpassingly weird, alienating work.