Criticisms Unwarranted

Rating: 8/10 (12 July 2012)

I personally disagree with many of the posts made by previous reviewers about how the plot holes ruined the movie entirely for them.
First of all, this movie is fully enjoyable on a scale outside of the plot. One has to realize that the movie is not focused on the invading aliens, but the life of a father/pastor turned upside down after the death of his wife. This is an experience from his point of view, and his revelations and understanding of himself after another traumatic event equal to that of the death of his life. If you have not realized this already, the scenes do not focus on the aliens themselves, but the family, and Graham.
Secondly, the critics of this film call it stupid because the aliens get killed by water, and that they are dumb because they invade the only planet with surface water in the entire solar system. There are several problems with this: as humans, you can't judge the intelligence of other species. If you really want to get sci-fi and all speculative, maybe they never knew about water as an element before, and therefore was not aware of its affects on them and maybe even not aware of its existence in the first place. Their technological advances, some claim, are absurd, because they can't be picked up on radar but can be heard on a baby monitor. The same thing applies-we don't know anything about the aliens, so it's completely ignorant to assume them to be dumb using human standards.
And, really, would the movie have satisfied your sci-fi fetishes if they were killed by large nuclear missiles? Would more explosions in the film have made your experience better? The film is an exploration of human nature, NOT a lavish, ultra-Hollywood-style shoot-em-up like independence day. If you go to the movies for the explosions, and inception-ist plot, then you will miss a lot of great movies out there like this one.