Cinematic crud

Rating: 1/10 (3 June 2008)

This film is so bad on so many levels, it's hard to believe. As many posts have noted, there are some SERIOUS plot holes in this piece of drek, and some pretty bad writing. The performances were just okay, but if you've seen the first ten minutes, then you've seen the best parts. Just a recap of some of the stupidest parts: Annoying little Dakota Fanning needing to go ten miles to pee. A bitch ex-wife,and two, no make that three neurotic kids, if you count Ray (Tom Cruise). Selective electronics being zapped, others not. Selective people being vaporized, our star not, much to everyones chagrin.The teenage kid gets incinerated but shows up at the end, no worse for the wear. Cars dead on the freeway, but somehow ALL of them off to the side to leave a nice path for our intrepid idiots. Airplane wreckage also leaving a nice path for aforementioned idiots, and on and on and on. Mr. Spielberg forgot one the basic tenants of summer fun film making and that is, if you're going to put your characters through hell, the audience needs to CARE ABOUT THEM! Most people that saw this film were rooting for the aliens from the word go. These characters were annoying, spiteful, bitter, clueless and oh yeah, did I mention annoying? The aliens looked about as menacing as your average teddy bear and Tim Robbins' psycho character was merely an odd diversion at best. I would like to be all high and mighty and say "Ha, at least I didn't pay to see this crap in a theater!" but I instead spent twice as much and bought it on DVD. This film was a monumental waste of money, talent and time. The 1953 version while not sporting all the fancy-shmancy CGI, was far superior in every other way. If you see this film and it makes you wish you had those two hours back, you can't say that you weren't warned.