THE TOMORROW WAR has a decent concept (people from the present are conscripted to fight alien invaders in the future) but spoils it by somehow over-explaining things as they happen and not explaining which rules of time travel they are following. The aliens have a killer design but don’t make an appearance until after 45 minutes of labored setup. Chris Pratt does the same likeable loser routine he does in everything, only this time he’s an ex special forces school teacher. Everyone else in the cast aside from Sam Richardson and JK Simmons (neither of whom are in it enough) is forgettable and the action and VFX are too inconsistent to leave an impact. If The Tomorrow War was trimmed down to be less bum-numbing and a bit less self-serious about its inherently silly concept, this could have been fun, as it is, when the beasties aren’t on screen it’s a bit of a slog. SSP