Scary but ultimately unsatisfying

Rating: 3/10 (25 November 2005)

I stumbled across a showing of this movie at a hotel, late at night, after the kids were in bed. Good thing--despite the PG-13 rating, this is NOT a movie you want your kids to see. Lots of scary special effects, and a relentless mood of despair that would give all but the hardiest thirteen-year-old nightmares for weeks.
For those who like to see neat CGI effects, this movie has lots of them--flying trucks, collapsing bridges, retro looking Martian walkers--this movie has got enough stuff to keep special effects fans happy. And for those who like to be scared, this movie will not disappoint either. Not a lot of explicit goo and gore, but bad stuff happening all over all the time.
Unfortunately, this film doesn't have much else to recommend it. Dakota Fanning, with little opportunity to be charming, spends most of this movie shrieking at the top of her lungs. Tom Cruise, as her deadbeat dad, is unconvincing and entirely unlikeable. His son, who wants to run off and see the aliens slaughtering the army--well, I would have let him go and told him not to come back even if he did live. Spielberg seems so intent on throwing together short set pieces that he has given up on trying to maintain a believable story line.
The worst flaw in this movie, however, is the utterly horrible ending. In H.G. Wells' original story, and in Orson Welles' radio broadcast, the death of the martians by lowly earthbound bacteria is an ironic but satisfying ending. In Spielberg's hands, however, it becomes a ridiculous deus ex machina that abruptly changes the tone of the movie from doom and gloom to "It's a beautiful morning." Cruise is suddenly reunited with his ex-wife (played by Miranda Otto, who mercifully gets to skip most of this movie), her family, and the son who ran off an hour ago to watch the martians splat New Jersey. You half expect to see Mr. Bluebird land on Tom's shoulder while a rainbow appears above the miraculously untouched brownstone where Miranda was hanging out.
All in all, not worth staying up to see.