Wow could this have been worse?

Rating: 1/10 (8 July 2005)

Having seen this film I too want to get in a tripod, load the death rays and go on a rampaging orgy of slaughter around the World. It stunk like a dying Martian.
How anyone as talented as Spielberg and with a budget larger than the GDP of a pacific island could excrete such a pile of steaming manure is beyond me. I knew Cruise's acting would have its usual emetic effect, how could it be otherwise? I wish cinemas would provide airline sick bags at his films, heavens - they must know by now. The acting? well, lets not grace it with that term, lets call it "doing stuff from a plot script in front of a camera", less pithy perhaps but more accurate. When someone says acting I think of Gielgud or Orson Welles, but then I'm old-school. Can no-one have a conversation in a Hollywood film by talking normally to each other anymore? Do they all have to degenerate into emoting over any inane event? Does Cruise's little girl put in a situation of stress have to be shown in hyper-ventilating hysteria to convey emotion. Does everyone have to EMOTE, AT FULL VOLUME, ALL THE TIME? Jesus. Over the top, hammy and inept. And from Spielberg of all people.
The film could have been so so good if they'd stripped out the schmaltzy mawkish family values sentimentality seen in every film nowadays. The clichéd separated father struggling with his kids for their love and respect. arggggghhhhh!!! Give me **** break.
The special effects were galling ILM excellence. Galling because they showed what the film could have been. There are shocking and disturbing scenes of a tripod using a cage basket of live captive humans as a "snack-as-you-walk" holder, a fleshy sphincter, and Martians using a hypodermic for drinking humans. Quite gross but exactly the sort of thing I hoped would push a 2005 film of the book to cinematic excellence rather than mere cash till bait. Instead we saw nearly nothing of the Martians, little of the military as in the HG Welles original book. No explanation of Martians, expansion of their motives, exploration of their personality or struggles with the moral dilemmas of ravaging the Earth? None was explored: presumably there was no running time left after mr Cruise EMOTING and saving his family.
At no time was there a sense of universal catastrophe. We heard at one stage: "Europe got wiped out" and that was it. Australia? Russia? South America? Not a mention not a single scene. I guess no-one in Idaho would be interested so why bother. This was no so much a film about a global apocalypse, but more one of "Martians go to Boston for a stag night, behave badly and get sick the morning after."
Really don't waste your money, if you're a masochist wait for xmas when your cousin who really hates you will buy it for you.