Critic Reviews

Blockbuster movies are often as loud and action-based as The Tomorrow War, but they’re rarely as diverse in tone or so delightfully wild when it comes to in-your-face entertainment.

It would probably be a mistake to emphasize the relationship aspect of The Tomorrow War too much. At its core, this is just a really good monster movie. All the same, there’s a touch of beauty to it.

Never before has a streaming release so capably evoked “Summer blockbuster.”

So, it’s Edge of Tomorrow meets Interstellar meets Aliens meets Tenet meets Independence Day, with their brains removed. But it’s still tremendous fun, because this thing moves. Let’s face it: If it slowed down, the audience might start asking too many questions. The Tomorrow War is just as stupid as it needs to be.

The sentimentality threatens to veer into melodrama at points, which Pratt struggles to handle. But The Tomorrow War has got a trashy popcorn vibe to it that it wholeheartedly embraces, and a cornball machismo that you can’t help but get taken in by, even if just for a second.

McKay, director of The Lego Movie, is most at home in humor, and The Tomorrow War can be funny. It’s less adept at some of the operatic notes it tries to strike, but, well, aliens can be tricky.

The first hour of The Tomorrow War is really quite dumb fun. The second half pumps the brakes on the wacky sci-fi and just goes in for gross-out action.

Though the movie is rife with too-convenient coincidences and relies on another iffy plot point or two to make its emotional arc work, the monster-killin’ functions well enough that few will complain.

There’s a lack of genuine emotional heft, not helped by some clunky dialogue (lines like "we are literally living on borrowed time"). But what the film really misses, amid several ear-splitting, CG-heavy alien-attack set-pieces, is humour.

Pratt, and in particular Betty Gilpin as his wife, give likable, grounded performances. But the screenplay is a bloated, unwieldy thing that is at least 30 minutes longer than it should be.