why spielberg, why ?

Rating: 2/10 (22 August 2005)

Spielberg always reminds me of Elvis; a talented artist who rarely produces anything of quality. Sure, these kind of statements are subjective, but let's examine this movie for a second: 1. Tom Cruise is not a dramatic actor. Period. He is forced in his acting, and with some minor exceptions (Born on the 4-th of July, for ex.) he acts very badly. That singing to his daughter in this movie was positively a crown achievement in bad acting in an otherwise "distinguished" career in bad acting. And, to his credit in a way, he looks like a responsible parent, so he was completely wrong in this role. 2. Was this movie really science-fiction?. The definition implies that it should be scientifically solid, minus the fictional elements. But this does not justify how 20+ people in an iron cage falling 20+ meters to the ground survive uninjured or that an super-advanced race of aliens manage to build a high-tech tracking machine (I mean the serpent looking arm at the end of the picture) that relies solely on sight and hearing to track something !? So apparently the aliens had no idea of infrared rays, motion detectors or x-ray. Congrats, Mr. Spielberg, you surpassed John Carpenter in the "best science fiction joke of the year" category. 3. There must have been some benevolent voodoo made on Cruise' family, cuz guess what - they all survived ! So that means you can walk out the theater feeling invincible, until something completely unrealistic will happen to you like a friend of yours dying from an allergic reaction to a bee sting and then you will understand what a true "genius" Spielberg really is as a storyteller. I am really looking forward to Spielberg's next crap. Who needs realism when you can enjoy a 5-th grade level movie and feel good for the rest of the week?