Fine movie except for the people in it. Great FX!

Rating: 5/10 (4 July 2005)

I was favorably impressed by the first 80 minutes of WotW, which in part is why I was so bitterly annoyed at the remaining 40 minutes.
To start off, Tom Cruise did a decent job in the lead as Ray Ferrier, he cried believably, flashed the pearly whites when needed, but otherwise seemed overwhelmed when called on to be manly. For the Ray character is a feckless wimp. His kids have contempt for him, his ex-wife patronizes him, even her new husband pities Cruise. He's irresponsible, a sloven, a cipher that I found it impossible to like or even care about.
Unfortunately, Tom Cruise is the best character in this movie.
His son Robbie (Justin Chatwin) is the usual Hollywood version of an angst ridden, rebellious teen who hates his dad. In this movie, he comes across as spoiled, rude, and downright stupid.
**SPOILER ALERT FOLLOWS**
For some reason, after the aliens attack, instead of helping Ray take care of Robbie's sister, Robbie starts behaving erratically, trying several times to join with soldiers deploying to fight the aliens. While he doesn't succeed, he nearly manages to get his sister killed. At one point when the Ferriers are escaping in a ferry, he tries to help several latecomers aboard, which was an attempt to make his character more sympathetic. Trouble is, 10 minutes later when they're fleeing for their lives, he decides to stay and watch the army fight the aliens. **Even though he's seen the alien's superior weapons and should have realized that no army could beat them!"" So essentially he abandons his little sister so he can watch the show!
You're supposed to believe that he gets killed in the ensuing all-consuming fireball, but at this point it was obvious that Spielberg wasn't playing fair and that Robbie would reappear just before the final credits.
Robbie's sister Rachel (Dakota Fanning) is the kind of precocious child that only exists in movies. She is calm, centered, much wiser than her old dad and perfectly willing to tell him how to live his life.
She also has a scream that'll shatter the fillings in your teeth. Imagine Fay Wray in King Kong, then hit yourself with a hammer--that's what she's like. She screams over and over and over and over again...until all you want is for an alien to put her out of our misery.
Finally there's that old coot Ogilvy (Tim Robbins) who hides the Ferriers in his basement. Will someone please tell me what the point was in his being in this movie??? Ogilvy's nuts, driven insane by the things he's seen (I guess) and all he wants is to attack the aliens for revenge. So you get one tiresome scene after another where the aliens are searching the basement after hearing noises and Ray has to fight or otherwise convince Ogilvy so he won't give them away. Ogilvy's end is supposed to be tragic, but I found it to be a relief.
That's it for the people. Now let's talk about the good stuff in this movie: the special FX.
Here are the gems: - The scenes in the city during the aliens first attack are amazing and almost terrifying. When they use the heatray, it instantly destroys whatever it contacts, which makes for great visuals when they turn the beams on an elevated highway.

There's a moment when the Ferriers, along with other refugees on a road, are stopped by a train crossing gate, moments later the train, engulfed in flames, flashes by. Very cool!

The crashed passenger jet is a surreal moment.

I thought the bit that occurred after the ferry overturned, when it's propeller almost killed the the Ferriers as they struggled to the water's surface, seemed too much like a ripoff from the plane crash in Castaway.
I was also mystified as to why so much of what happens in the movie is unseen. A big budget movie like this should have had one jaw-dropping scene after another, but this one was unsatisfying. For instance, the electrical lightning strikes are only shown for an instant-- instead you see people's reactions to them, hardly dramatic when you can't see what they're seeing. And the battles between the US army and the aliens are brief and not as exciting as it should have been. Did the producers run out of money for FX?
Finally, it made sense when Wells wrote WotW that aliens might not know about our germs. But after the rewrite, when they've been watching use for a million years, how could they not know??? And why is it that aliens who've developed sophisticated weapons and power systems never thought of using infrared devices to scan for body heat?? The clunky camera they used was laughable (although it might have been in homage to the original WotW).
Prepare yourself for disappointment.