It doesn't HAVE to all make sense, people.

Rating: 7/10 (12 March 2003)

!!!!!!!!!! CONTAINS SPOILERS !!!!!!

Okay, I've read a lot of criticism about this film but I have to defend it.
If anyone has read 'Tommyknockers' by Stephen King they will be aware of the stupid alien theory. Okay they can travel to earth but maybe they didn't invent interstellar travel, they could have poached it form some other nearby species or inherited it from a previously enlightened culture on their own planet ( I mean, when the ancient Egyptians were building pyramids , some cultures were still living in caves in other parts of the world ). If they were that smart they would have been far more subtle and used more insidious ways to get what they wanted rather than the very clumsy methods they did use. They had no obvious weapons (except their poison gas spray) and seemed to be unable to cope with a locked door barring their way!! Also they struck me as rather insectile - quite organised but not too able to think creatively, even their speech sounded like crickets or something.
As for the water thing - maybe they didn't KNOW that water was toxic to them. Perhaps earth was the first planet they ever visited that HAD water. And if they they subsequently realised after landing that water could harm them, then maybe they had a sort of stubborn attitude to the idea of giving up and going home after travelling all that way in the first place. Lets face it, everyone knows that smoking gives you cancer but how many people keep smoking anyway and think 'it won't happen to me'.
Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix were excellent and the film had some quite subtle humour and nice touches like the recruiting office scene where JP gets a hard time from local idiot Lionel Pritchard and then there's a tiny moment where you get to see that Pritchard is a total loser. I liked the fact that Mel Gibson didn't seem to own any guns - being an ex-reverend and everything, and the cursing scene was funny too.
I don't think films should necessarily give you nice neat endings and answer all your questions. I think that M Night Shayamalan would be pleased to see how many people are outraged by the loose ends, I'm sure it's exactly what he would have wanted to see.