Month: July 2021

The Tomorrow War (PG-13)

Chris Pratt stars in the old-fashioned summer save-the-world popcorn movie The Tomorrow War, released on Amazon Prime Video.

Dan Forester (Pratt) is having difficulty getting ahead in his career (science something or other) but has all sorts of admiration from his wife, Emmy (Betty Gilpin), and young daughter, Muri (Ryan Kiera Armstrong). He’s in the middle of a consoling snuggle with the two of them while watching World Cup soccer when a wormhole opens up on midfield and soldiers come pouring through. They announce that they are from about 30 years in the future and are losing a war with an alien force. Come and fight with us to save humanity, they say, and, as news clips explain, the countries of the world eventually agree to a draft. The people drafted are both random and specific: They are men and women, fit and doughy, but most tend to be older — perhaps because, as Dan and fellow draftee Charlie (Sam Richardson) surmise, they will all be dead by 2052 and therefore won’t accidentally meet their older selves and cause a paradox.

When Dan is called up, it’s after nearly a year of the present sending soldiers to the future, with few returning and no sign that humanity’s prospects for winning the war are improving. He learns that draftees get very little training and not much in the way of uniforms; it’s just “here’s a gun, try not to get eaten.” The aliens, white insect/crustacean-y creatures, don’t have weapons (except for the sharp spikes that shoot out of their tentacles, hence their name “white spikes”) or even an organizing structure. They eat, people and whatever other animals cross their path, and once a week they go back to their nest-holes and rest (or, as we later learn, breed, which is why there are now so many of them). White spikes move fast and only lucky neck or abdomen shots take them out, so when Dan shows up in the future for his seven-day stint in the war, it’s clear that the outlook for humanity is bleak.

Dan, who once served in the military and did a tour of duty in Iraq (where he had a leadership role), is also a science teacher who has shared his love of science with his daughter. Charlie is also a former science professor who now works in tech research and development and makes up for his lack of military prowess with quips. Dan has a difficult relationship with his father, James (J.K. Simmons), who also has a military background and now has a shifty job fixing planes and skirting the law. I could list a few other Chekhov guns in the packed metaphorical armory of the first segment of this movie that go off in the final action set piece. There are a lot.

And that’s OK.

Like an Independence Day with a smaller budget and a lower wattage of stars, The Tomorrow War hits a lot of the familiar apocalypse action movie beats with a nice mix of shooting and explosions and humor and basically appealing characters played by actors who have more in them than this movie asks of them. It’s microwave popcorn fare, in the sense that it isn’t quite the fresh popcorn with real butter of summer blockbusters past and in the sense that you’ll be enjoying this one at home, which perhaps lowers the bar a little. If you need it, you can look for some deeper commentary about climate change and the ability of humans to come together (or not) when they really need to. But you also don’t need to dig that deep for a reason to basically enjoy this (long but forgivably so) lightweight summer movie. B-

Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action, language and some suggestive references, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Chris McKay with a screenplay by Zach Dean, The Tomorrow War is two hours and 20 minutes long and is distributed by Paramount Pictures but somehow available on Amazon Prime Video.

The Boss Baby: Family Business (PG)

The suit-and-tie baby of the 2017 The Boss Baby returns in The Boss Baby: Family Business, a cute animated movie that isn’t quite as rich as the original version but is still family-friendly.

And by that I mean not only that it is kid-appropriate (for, I don’t know, elementary schoolers and up) but also all about family. In the first movie, Boss Baby, also named Ted (voice of Alec Baldwin), is the younger brother of Tim (voiced in this movie by James Marsden). Though appearing to be a regular goo-goo-gaa-gaa baby, Boss Baby is actually a 30 Rock’s Jack Donaghy-style corporate ladder-climber sent by his company, Baby Corp., on a mission. Tim deeply resented new baby Ted at first but eventually learned to live with him, in part by helping him with his corporate ambitions at Baby Corp., the company that is bullish on babies and tries to keep their affection rankings higher than those of, say, puppies.

In the years since, Ted and Tim have grown up and grown apart. (Actually, in the years since 2017, Boss Baby and Tim have had continuing adventures in a Netflix TV series called The Boss Baby: Back in Business, which has an enjoyably oddball sense of humor. For example: Boss Baby finds himself battling an outside consultant brought in to evaluate Baby Corp. managers and makes regular cracks about why you can’t trust the marketing department. In one episode, when the boys’ grandma fights with a department store over returning a blouse, she ends up unionizing the store workers. It’s weird and I recommend it.)

But now adult Tim is living in his parents’ (voiced by Jimmy Kimmel and Lisa Kudrow) old house with his wife Carol (voice of Eva Longoria) and their two daughters, second-grader Tabitha (voice of Ariana Greenblatt) and baby Tina (voice of Amy Sedaris). Tabitha has recently started at a new school and seems stressed out by its expectation for advanced math and proficiency in Mandarin. Tim, a stay-at-home dad, is worried that she is growing up too fast and growing away from him, not unlike how he and Ted have grown apart. Though they were once best friends, Ted is now very busy with his executive businessman lifestyle and mostly interacts with Tim by turning down invitations to come and visit and sending overly elaborate gifts.

This can not stand, decides Tina, who is, like her uncle before her, a Baby Corp. executive. She needs both Ted and Tim to help fight a new threat: Dr. Armstrong (voice of a very Jeff Goldblum-y Jeff Goldblum), the head of the international chain of high-achievement-focused schools (including Tabitha’s). Tina and Baby Corp. are certain he has some sort of shifty plan and they need Boss Baby to help them. Thus does Tina lure Ted to the family home and then dose both Ted and Tim with special de-aging formula that temporarily turns them back to roughly Tabitha-aged Tim and Boss Baby.

The first movie used the Boss Baby conceit as a way to play out Tim’s feelings about going from only child to oldest child with a pushy infant sibling. Likewise, this movie uses it to work through various family relationships — Tim and Ted, Tim and Tabitha and maybe Tim and his own sense of self if his oldest daughter doesn’t need him as much. And it works about as well as the first movie did, but this feels less kid-focused. Though he appears in a kid’s body, Tim is really an adult person with his adult person worries and the movie is more centered on those than on executive baby humor or kid antics.

That said, the movie did seem to have enough wackiness to entertain kids — there’s a lot of silliness with a horse, we do still get some “the horror of other babies” moments with Boss Baby. Goldblum brings a nice element of weirdness to his character who is a villain but not violent or particularly mean.

I think I liked the original The Boss Baby (which doesn’t appear to be streaming anywhere but is available for rent or purchase) more than a lot of reviewers. I still like the overall universe, as presented here, even if the sequel doesn’t quite match up. B

Rated PG for rude humor, mild language and some action, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Tom McGrath with a screenplay by Michael McCullers (based on the books by Marla Frazee), The Boss Baby: Family Business is an hour and 47 minutes long and is distributed by Universal Studios in theaters and on Peacock.

The Forever Purge (R)

The Purge-supporting totalitarian government of the U.S. is threatened by an even more violent social-media-organized group in The Forever Purge.

Don’t worry if you haven’t seen or have forgotten previous Purge entries (this is No. 5 in the series). This movie sort of catches you up/reorients you in the Purge universe: The Purge is the annual 12-hour period when people can commit any crimes they want and apparently what they want is to wear menacing animal masks and go on spree killings. It went away for a while but is back now, thanks to the recent elections favoring the Purge-supporting New Founding Fathers. They were reelected because of increased crime and anti-immigration sentiment and something something The Purge will fix it.

This movie, though, isn’t really about the Purge. While we see two main sets of characters prepare for and weather the Purge, most of the story takes place in the hours after it’s over.

The wealthy cattle ranching family in rural Texas the Tuckers gathers at their large, secure home for the Purge: there’s the paterfamilias Caleb (Will Patton), his adult daughter Harper (Leven Rambin), his sullen adult son Dylan (Josh Lucas) and Dylan’s pregnant wife, Emma Kate (Cassidy Freeman). None of them seem to be on Team Purge or Team Current Administration, though Dylan has some general resentment because his father and everybody else at the ranch knows that he’s not such a great cowboy. Certainly, he’s not a great cowboy compared to Juan (Tenoch Huerta), one of the ranch workers, and this makes Dylan all jealous, which he expresses via racism.

Juan and his wife Adela (Ana de la Reguera) are recent immigrants from Mexico and are aware of the weird annual festival of violence of their new home but they are determined to make it work, especially Adela. They spend Purge night hunkered down with other families in a fortified and guarded warehouse. And yet she remains optimistic about America and their future as the Purge ends and she heads back to her life. Optimistic right up to the moment when she is trapped and nearly killed by some mask-wearing loons telling her that it’s “purge ever after.” The Forever Purgers have decided one day of violence is not enough and want to continue the killing until everyone who doesn’t agree with their brand of white supremacist fascism is dead.

She and Juan and their friend (Alejandro Edda) and the Tuckers trying to find their way to safety — which is eventually identified as refuge in Mexico — makes up the bulk of this movie’s action, making it not really about some “organized chaos” day but about actual anarchy and the collapse of society.

I’ll try to separate what has always annoyed me about the Purge movies and the overall “watching a reenactment of your root canal” feel of this movie with what worked about it — and there are small elements that work.

I have always found the Purge as a concept maddening, both as public policy (how does it reduce crime and stimulate the economy? Even in a bread-and-circus sense it seems stupid) and as a story-telling device. The movies use the Purge as a sort of dippy murder fest — either thrill killing or petty revenge — without going much beyond that. There is a general “saying something about wealth inequality” sheen on these movies but they don’t really say that much; “rich people are jerks” is maybe as far as it goes.

So what works here? The movie gets its pacing right. It takes us from Juan and Adela’s backstory to Purge night to post-Purge pretty quickly. And it keeps up the energy without lingering too much on grisly violence for grisly violence’s sake.

Ana de la Reguera is a fun action heroine. We are probably with her more frequently than with any other one character and she definitely has that believable, can-do butt-kicking energy.

The movie also has some visual cleverness about juxtaposing Mexico and the chaotic U.S.; one of the final shots in particular made me think “huh, neat” for the way it referenced so many other movies.

Overall, though, The Forever Purge was a bummer, but I guess if Purge movies are your thing, this is maybe one of the better ones. C

Rated R for strong/bloody violence and language throughout, according to the MPA on filmlistings.com. Directed by Everado Gout with a screenplay by James DeMonaco, The Forever Purge is an hour and 43 minutes long and is distributed by Universal Studios, in theaters.

Featured photo: The Tomorrow War