Lacks everything but Special Effects

Rating: 6/10 (3 August 2005)

This is a movie where plot holes run wild....yes there are tons of them. But the ones that can't go unmentioned are the scene where the plane has crashed outside the wife's house, amid all this rubble, cruise's car is fine, and there's a neat little path right down the street through the destruction so they can drive away. Of course all the electronic crap.
The special effects are spectacular. This of course is expected with this type of film, being a Spielberg/blockbuster film. Every turn in the movie there is a tripod alien destroying a part of the city. This is the highlight of this film because the plot lacks, the characterization lacks and the directing is below average for Spielberg.
Anybody want to slap not only Tom's character in the face....but every other character??? Not one sympathetic human character in the entire film. Tom is an asshole, Dakota is crying all the time which made her extremely annoying, the son is a whiny bitch, Tim Robbins is an insane annoying useless character. Tim Robbins does nothing but distracts, he serves no point but to chew up screen time and make us think Tom will do anything for the life of his kid, but this comes across of jokey when they close the door and "fight" Robbie should have died---it was a cheap move to have him show up in the end after saying he had to see the fight over the hill. Whenever this happens in the movie, it brings it down(Jurassic Park III.) Is it just me or does every Spielberg flick have to end in the happy we're okay ending in all of his movies.
The pacing's terrible  it just suddenly ends, bang, WAY TOO ABRUPT. The aliens catch colds and die. Film over. And most surprisingly in a Spielberg flick, there's no emotional clout here. There is no climax....that's because the whole movie is just destruction after destruction, if your into that kind of thing, then this movie is for you. But the best scene in this movie is not the destruction of the cities, but the basement scene involving the pointless character of Tim Robbins. Even though the scene is laughable at parts, it still holds up as suspenseful.
The motivation of the aliens remain thoroughly obscure, at first, when they presumably want to rid the earth of mankind, They content themselves with firing death rays, like target practice, at individual fleeing humans, the most inefficient method of extermination imaginable. Then, midway through, suggest that, for no particular reason, the aliens are harvesting the humans to make those red vines things out of their blood.
I felt cheated at the end of the film. The world was left in sh*t, everything was destroyed, covered in the blood vine things and we go to Boston where everything is fine...no houses destroyed, family all nice and neat and of course the happy Spielberg ending.