Good special effects, but complete lack of story

Rating: 3/10 (3 March 2006)

This movie is a major case of the Emperor having no clothes. It has potential to be great, but wrecks it with a terrible ending and huge leaps in logic.
The basic plot is that aliens invade the Earth, using machines that they buried deep in the ground centuries before. They also have the ability to shut off the electricity temporarily. Tom Cruise plays the lousy dad to Dakota Fanning and Justin Chatwin, and only wants to keep them safe and get them to Boston to be with their mother.
The effects in the movie are wonderful, the characters themselves aren't all that great. As noted before, Tom Cruise plays a lousy father, but neither of the children are that wonderful either. You almost wonder why to bother rooting for them.
The big letdown in this movie are the huge leaps in logic. The electricity seems to work only at convenient times, Chatwin's character runs off to fight the aliens and vanishes, only to appear later completely unscathed despite nearly everyone else who was with him being slaughtered. The worst of these leaps is the ending. Not only is the mother fine in Boston, but her entire neighborhood remains beautiful except for a few wayward cars, while the rest of the city is a pile of rubble. She doesn't even look as if there even has been an alien invasion, rather more like she's just gotten back from a day at the spa. While this gives the movie a happy ending, it is just ridiculous and destroys whatever it was that Spielberg hoped to accomplish.