Spielberg sells out and is lazy

Rating: 6/10 (7 August 2007)

I love scifi movies. I love seeing movies made from Phillip K. Dick stories (though they can never approach the brilliance of the books). I was able to appreciate BladeRunner, Total Recall & even Paycheck and a Scanner Darkly. I also love stuff that touches on todays political climate and this was the perfect chance to address our current loss of civil rights in the name of "safety".
But Spielberg has disappointed me deeply....
I can forgive the casting of both crazy Cruise & Farrell, neither of whom I like as an actor.
Since he's not a first time director should I assume the stolen stuff was intentional homages? Matrix went all GREEN, let's go all BLUE. Let's add TRONs cool looking cars. Clockwork Orange was stunning for it's juxtaposition of calming classical music with violence? Let's use that. OK fine, whatever.
What bothered me were the glaringly sloppy points in the script. I'm willing to suspend a lot of disbelief, ignore plot holes (esp. to do with the future). However, you seriously can't expect me to believe that no one revoked his access to high security areas after he'd been found out. Using his old eyes to get into a building not once by twice -- even after he's been convicted & jailed? That's just lazy! If he's still got access and that doesn't set off any alarms, then there was no need to remove them was there?
Also, as someone else has mentioned, setting the crucial plot twist in a "murder she wrote" moment of "I didn't mention how she died" was just cheap and ruined the movie.
And as many others have said, the overly sugary, touchy-feely, everyone is happy ending was WAY OVER THE TOP and totally unnecessary.
But what I can't forgive the film is the product placement. I appreciate the way they show how ads are moving to become so individualized. But you know that Guiness, GAP & the others paid Spielberg millions for those scenes! It's incredibly sad that such a famous director would sell out like that. I have lost a lot of respect for him. There could have been other ways to show the same idea without turning the movie into an ad itself. I certainly don't' remember a bunch of scenes set in the mall in PK Dick's story! For shame for tainting his story with your sell out Spielberg!