Chris Pratt plays Dan Forester, a science teacher and former military man called up from his life in our time to fight a war for humanity's survival 30 years in the future. We see his life in the current day long enough to know he's intelligent and decent, has a wonderful wife (Betty Gilpin), a very intelligent daughter (Ryan Kiera Armstrong), and is alienated from his also ex-military father (J.K. Simmons, putting in one of his poorer performances in recent years). And then he's hurled into the future war, as the time-travel equipment simultaneously goes haywire. If you don't know that saving the world is going to fall on his shoulders, you've never seen a movie before. Or you're assuming this one is a whole lot better than it actually is.

What follows is fairly standard military-bonding-in-battle kind of stuff, with nasty, horrible looking aliens who are very effective predators killing almost everybody as the remnants of humanity struggle to somehow defeat them. I can't go into more detail without some pretty nasty spoilers, but I will say that I thought the first two acts were pretty silly ... until I saw the third act, which made the first two look almost quality. I mean ... this is glossy, beautiful product with well done aliens and shit blowing up and workman-like acting. But there really wasn't anything to recommend it, it's a stupid and badly constructed story.