Good, but quite a few things wrong

Rating: 8/10 (12 August 2002)

I walked out of the theater tonight with a few chills... but by the time I had gotten into my car to head home I was already questioning a lot of parts of the movie. Was it really as good as my initial reaction? The answer I think to that is that no, it wasn't.
First, the good points. All of the acting was very good, especially the kid actors. The script was also excellent, it was the perfect balance of comedy and suspense. It also has simply, a great plot. Sure, the whole sci-fi aliens attack movie has been done before, but not as good as this. Instead of focusing on the world-wide disaster as in other movies, this movie instead focuses on one farming family. However, by only watching this one small community you still get the feeling of this massive global conflict.
Now though, some of the bad points. First, the thing that angered me the most... a lot of the movie is basically a carbon copy of "The Birds"... no, not the movie, but the original story; however the birds were merely replaced with aliens. Many of the details of this plot are taken straight from that story, and that is disappointing. Second, it is to a point, simply unrealistic. Why do we not see one pesron with a gun on this farm? We consistently ask ourselves while watching movies about people in big cities "how did they get that gun" when they pull one out of nowhere when the character is just to perfectly in need of a gun. Here though, on a farm where you would expect the owners to keep some sort of weapon, there is none. Speaking of weapons, why don't the aliens use any? The final major bad point of the movie is the book that Rory Culkin buys about extraterrestrials. This book, written purely based on speculation, is 100% factually correct through the entire movie and the characters rely on it to find out what the aliens might try to do. How convenient is that?

Enough of my nagging, I'll wrap this up now... but first, I want to say how I did love the news updates on TV that were added in my Shalayman (sorry if my spelling is inaccurate). The TV updates are absolutely perfect to show the global chaos forming, the nervous atmosphere of people around the world, and the joy and elation when problems are solved throughout the movie. These brief clips added a lot to this film.
I'm extremely glad that I did go to see this movie, as it was 2 hours of good entertainment. However, with all of the rave reviews of this movie that I've been hearing I have to wonder if people ever thought more about the movie than your original reaction. My reaction was far different than the one I have about the movie hours after seeing it.