War of the Bores

Rating: 3/10 (9 February 2006)

I'm sorry, I was't going to make a comment regarding this until I saw the high but unworthy praise drizzled over this charade of a movie. Yes, we may have the worlds supposedly greatest director directing one of Hollywood's top stars, but Spielberg seems to be film-making by numbers these days. Pick a topic, gather stock crew together (John Williams music again. Janus Kamnski DP again ILM Effects bunch etc etc) Pick nice safe box office dead certs for cast. Rattle the thing off and get working on the next job before even finishing the last one. I'm not saying War of the Worlds is a turkey, but it should have been on my Christmas dinner table with an onion stuffed up it's backside.
It is truly abysmal. Take an age-old English classic, move it both in time and space to New York (WHY!!?) Screw around with the plot and bury the story deeper than the spaceships, (What was wrong with meteorites?). Set the "hero" as a miserable, obnoxious idiot with a dysfunctional family of a separated wife, car-stealing son and a precocious daughter that never stops squealing. She is one good reason to keep the pro-spanking bill. Most leads, you want to follow them, empathise with them, worry for them. Personally I wish Tom Cruise's character had been made toast in the first reel and put us all out of our misery. He was totally unlikeable, as were most of the cast. The only redeeming feature were the effects, but we still spent far too much time running around dark cellars with little green men.
The recent remake of "The Time Machine" was not great, but it had the atmosphere and joi d'vivres of H.G.Wells, The fact that Victorians would have reacted so much differently to this technology. Shifting it both historically and geographically so that Americans could understand it just makes me wince. Why do filmmakers SO underestimate their audiences intelligence?
I despise Hollywood for messing with other peoples work. Maybe we should take an American Classic like "Gone with the Wind" and transpose it to 1980's Guy Ritchie's London. I think there would be a riot.
"Frankly my dear, I don't give a rat's arse."