Mr. Movie Review: Chris Pratt goes back to the future to battle in ‘The Tomorrow War’

Regular readers know I’m hooked on science fiction movies. If there is any genre of movie I look forward to seeing, it’s a good sci-fi flick.

Here’s what makes that statement significant. Critics rarely “look forward” to a movie. After all, movie watching is work so we tend to take them as they come. Once in awhile one will pique a little more than casual interest than others, but it’s rare.

“The Tomorrow War” fits the looking-forward-to category and stars Chris Pratt.

People 30 years in the future pop into the present and tell people here that aliens have invaded and without their help, all humanity will be wiped out — permanently.

A draft of sorts starts. The military from the future takes over, grabs people they know are going to die soon and sends them into the future to do battle with the impossible-to-beat aliens.

Pratt’s Dan Forester is one of them.

Forester — fortunately — is ex-military. He’s whisked into the future where he hooks up with one of humanity’s leaders. She has purposely selected him for a very special task.

An odd group of characters — including J.K. Simmons who stars as Forester’s alienated dad — go to war and the fate of all humanity is in the balance and in their hands.

I grew up in Kennewick in the 1950s and early 1960s. My love of sci-fi came from late Saturday night science fiction and horror movies that aired on the cable channels piped into here from Spokane. Most of them were old black and white things from the ‘40s and ‘50s.

My friends and I caught current sci-fi and horror at the Benton Theater in Kennewick and the Liberty and Pasco Theaters in Pasco.

Richland was eight miles away and no way could we make that trek without parental help, and — hey — it was the 1960s, no kid I knew wanted any kind of parental help for anything.

Ever.

Movies would often go from theater to theater. It would be at one for a week and then move to another. Video versions didn’t exist then, so if the sci-fi, or horror movie, was a good one, we had no choice but to catch it at all three.

Somewhere in the 1960s producers figured out there was money to be made with the two genres. So films like “The Tomorrow War” got a big star or two and even bigger, better effects.

Futuristic guns zap fatal laser beams at aliens, or whatever creature is threatening a city, country, planet or the universe. They zap back, or they are — like “The Tomorrow War” — lightening fast and dismember people in the creative ways only found in the imagination of a movie writer.

Like its predecessors, “The Tomorrow War” is loud and fast. That’s a positive. It also stars Pratt. As he was in the Guardians of the Galaxy flicks and the Jurassic World films, Pratt is very good in this kind of role. He’s good-looking, buff and — when needed — can toss off a good comedy line.

And it is here where “The Tomorrow War” fails. The movie just isn’t fun.

Time-travel movies and alien invasion movies need some humor to be believable. We all know time travel just isn’t possible (yet), and the odds of aliens ending up gobbling up humans as an afternoon snack isn’t likely either.

For some reason humor helps sell the idea and makes the possibility of these things actually happening, more real. Odd but true.

If you can’t use a lot of humor, then you need a premise that is so clever, and so original, that it keeps you glued to the screen and totally involved in the dilemma facing the characters.

Here are three good examples of how that works, “Independence Day” in 1996, 2014’s Tom Cruise flick, “Edge of Tomorrow” and 2011’s “Source Code.”

The first was packed with humor and adventure and — today — is on everyone’s favorite list.

“Edge” has Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt, and the premise was totally original. In places it’s funny. “Source Code” has a story that’s very similar. While it doesn’t have much humor, the story is intelligent movie and it features great performances.

That’s one of the serious flaw of “The Tomorrow War.” You figure the solution out almost immediately. It’s so obvious and has you wondering why they waited so long and let so many people die before engineering a victory.

On the positive side, “The Tomorrow War” gets some points for originality, casting and decent effects. Kudos, too, to Pratt, his co-stars, director Chris McKay (the Lego Batman movies), screenwriter Zach Dean (“Deadfall”) and the small city of special effects artists who work really hard to sell the story.

Maybe they worked too hard.

▪ Rated PG-13 for mature themes and violence. You can stream it on Amazon Prime.

▪ Rating: 2 1/2 out of 5

The Boss Baby: Family Business

“The Boss Baby: Family Business” is a sequel to the 2017 hit. It picked up an Oscar nomination and other animated movie award nominations. Apparently, 2017 was not a great year for animated movies. The original film wasn’t all that good.

The sequel is much better.

The protagonists from movie one, Ted and Tim, have grown up. Ted is a very wealthy CEO and Tim is a stay at home dad. They don’t see much of each other. Tim a great father raising two lovely daughters. One of them, Tabitha, idolizes Ted and is driven for success.

Still in diapers daughter, Tina gets called by Baby Corp to get the two brothers together and to solve the mystery of Tabitha’s school. It’s run by Dr. Erwin Armstrong. He’s using the kids at his school to do the kind of evil that animated movie villains often do.

Most of the original cast returns. Alec Baldwin gives voice to Ted. James Marsden replaces Tobey Maguire as the voice of Tim. Jeff Goldblum does the vocal chores for Dr. Armstrong.

Amy Sedaris, Ariana Greenblatt, Eva Longoria, Jimmy Kimmel and Lisa Kudrow round out the cast.

My comment that the sequel is better than the original comes with an asterisk.

Like the original film, “The Boss Baby: Family Business” struggles to find an audience. Young kids will miss a lot of the humor and at 1:47, adults who will laugh at some of humor, won’t stay interested long enough to have it matter.

The animation isn’t all that original but some of the music sequence effects used by director Tom McGrath are terrific. Unfortunately, the music isn’t all that good.

I am going to give “The Boss Baby: Family Business” a positive rating. I cannot — however — recommend the movie. That’s mostly because it fails to find an audience.

▪ Rated PG for mature themes. It’s playing at the AMC Classic Kennewick 12, the Fairchild Cinemas Queensgate 12, Southgate 10 and Pasco theater.

▪ Rating: 3 1/2 out of 5

This story was originally published July 1, 2021 at 1:42 PM with the headline "Mr. Movie Review: Chris Pratt goes back to the future to battle in ‘The Tomorrow War’."