A Live-Action Sci-Fi war film so loaded with CGI monsters, landscapes & urban mayhem, it makes sense to bring in animation director Chris McKay (LEGO BATMAN; ROBOT CHICKEN) to run things. Working off a nifty, if not particularly original idea (Alien Threat dooms mankind in the future, but a wormhole brings military emissaries to today’s world to draft recruits and time-jump into the battle decades ahead*), it would make a solid premise if only half the pieces clicked. But it’s one of those films that feel as if it died in development; too many executives sending too many story & character notes. So, it’s a Climate Change allegory & warning. It’s a now-and-future family crisis drama. It’s a war fatigue & band-of-brothers tale. And with an ironic twist since as things turn out the answer was back home, back in the present all along. Fortunately, Chris Pratt is just about perfect as heroic regular guy in Dad Jeans (before heading into battle he’s entirely believable as a high school science teacher) and there are some nice supporting turns from the men (the women less so). But loud & exhausting when it means to be exciting (it might have been unbearable in a theater), it’s another case of diminishing returns on the infinite possibilities of computer generated aliens, with suspense-free plotting from scripter Zach Dean (and all those execs*) that slips from the amusingly casual to the expediently lazy.
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Where most time-travel plots are obsessed with small changes in the continuum having large repercussions on the past or future, here, it’s only about killing the aliens. But presumably, half the next generation, the force fighting for time, wouldn’t exist with the alterations of history made by our guys. An interesting lack of interest that plays as a cheat.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Was there a prize (The JAWS Memorial) for coming up with new ways of saying ‘Smile You Son of a Bitch’ as you took aim at an alien?
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