The Tomorrow War(Amazon Prime)
Starring Chris Pratt, Yvonne Strahovski, J. K. Simmons, Betty Gilpin
Directed by Chris McKay
Rating: * ½
“They are hungry, we are food,” says a character about monsters gobbling up the global population.Watching this film, I felt I was being devoured by one of those monsters. It was hungry, and I was a fool.Burp.
So how bad is this badass blizzard-belching big-screen thunderstorm shrunken to the size of your phone or wherever you want to groan while braving through 2 hours and 20 minutes of unintelligible comicbook subversion and outerspace prattle?The Tomorrow War is not a film. It is a series of video games strung together by a director who pretends to tell a story when all he really wants to do is move on to the next action sequence.
There is scant attention to detail or character development. To take one example, why is Chris Pratt’s Dan Forester so uppity about his father, played by the brilliant J K Simmons, the only halfway decent performer in this ham-fest?Their one confrontation sequence is shot with cautionary repose, so that Mr Pratt inadequacies as an actor are not exposed.
Those, the inadequacies, there are in plenty. Pratt always gives the impression of being a brat trying to act all grownup and tackling situations that are way beyond his intellect.Here he is assigned to save the world from a foreign invasion, a task our Hollywood heroes have been handling since Bruce Willis in Armageddon. Bruce looked convincing in the job.Where there is a Willis, there’s a way.
Chris Pratt is neither intellectually nor emotionally equipped to handle such a global crisis. When he meets his daughter Muri Forester (Yvonne Strahovski ) after several years his introductory line is about whether she spells Forester with one r.Errrr,how does that matter? Unless he is trying to find out if she’s his daughter or not in the most discreet way he can.
Discretion is not one of the strong virtues of this in-your-face adventure saga as subtle as a fart in your face.The sprawling narrative abounds in such stupid witless exchanges making us wonder why the characters need to speak when they have nothing to say. They are clearly there to support the action sequences which are designed like gigantic funfare treats for children who have just passed their exams and have been promised a treat by their parents.
I looked hard for one solid convincing scene or dialogue in this unwieldy crap-a-thon. I came away with nada…nothing…nil.
Devoid of style and substance The Tomorrow War is a futile fuel-free fitful fantasy-voyage into a future where aliens will rule the world.I think we have more to worry about right now than hungry aliens. How about famished citizens who don’t know where there next meal would come from? The budget of this indecently exorbitant Malice In Plunderland could feed the entire hemisphere of Covid casualties.The gobbling goblins of this gooey monster movie didn’t scare me. The brains behind this absurdist bullocks did. Who thinks up such nonsense? My undying respect to the writers for having sold this idea to the studio.