short-sells Wells' classic

Rating: 1/10 (3 July 2005)

Regrettably, Spielberg's style and H.G. Wells drama mix like oil and water in this screenplay. Absolutely gorgeous and faithful special effects aside, this film should have had the style, frenzy and pace of the 1997 "Independence Day," which is more of a tribute to Well's work than this hybrid.
The entire freakin' earth is being torched by Martians but we the viewer are mostly stuck taking a snail's pace walk through New York State and presumably Connecticut. We mostly watch a lot of dispossessed people screaming and running and getting stomped on by the tripod Martian war machines, which take the place of Godzilla in similar Japanese film shots. Almost too soon, we end up at townhouse in Boston's Back Bay which is inexplicably spared the Martian wrath. Instead, the Martian war machines, are stumbling around like drunks, with absolutely no dramatic buildup to their demise, as in the closing chapter in the Wells novel.
Far too much of the film dwells on Cruise's mundane family issues. I can't help but think that Cruise insisted on a quota of screen time minutes so that he could do such insipid things as sing a Beach Boys song as a lullaby, and engage in everyday banter with his son as to why he's such a lousy dad.
He's so worried about this he doesn't even attempt to turn on a radio or TV to see what The President has to say about the End of the World. He instead struggles with making peanut butter sandwiches. We know nothing about what lead to the family breakup, and so are left as voyeurs as the world comes crashing all around them.
The wicked Martian invasion plays second fiddle to watching Tom Cruise sort out these commonplace parenting issues with his two children. The need for this kind of story thread is a classic Spielberg flaw. It similarly skewed 1977 "Close Encounters of the Third Kind."
In fairness, Spielberg does show respect for the Well's novel (unlike the abysmal 2002 Time Machine remake). There are some wonderfully horrific scenes reminiscent of his style in Jaws, but there just aren't enough of them, thanks to Mr. Cruse's control, I suspect.
Some wonderful cinematic opportunities are lost: 1. Some sort of Armageddon-ish, large scale battle with the U.S. military. Barely a couple lines a dialogue talk about the Martian's having invincible force fields (introduced in the 1950 George Pal version) but that battle is left to the imagination. Even the George Pal version built up to nuclear bomb drop on a Martian "nest." Instead, we get few low-budget Humvees burning up and a lot of Army reservists doing crowd control.
2. An attack on NYC as described in the 1939 Orson Wells' radio version: i.e. war machines wading across the Hudson River and stalking up Broadway, gassing everyone in there wake.
3. The chilling emergence of a living Martian from their landing craft in the pit. The disastrous first encounter with the military, and the emergence of the war machine from the landing pit.
4. The dramatic military showdown between a battleship and a wading war machine, where the ship blows off the head of the machine.
5. The snake-line arm that feels its way around the cellar, rather than a return of Pal's roaming remote TV snake.
What's especially annoying is the film's inane plot scenario, which is even worse than the water-allergic aliens in "Signs." The Martians buried zillions war machines on earth one million years ago. Yeah sure. They had a million years to evolve and think about a minor inconvenience like biocontamination, and still didn't get it? They also patiently wait to humans to arise, pollute and pave over the planet (not to mention building military weapons) and then decide to invade?
No doubt their final word was a big Homer Simpson "Doh!"