Disappointing

Rating: 2/10 (23 November 2005)

I was really hoping that Spielberg had done justice to the classic book by HG Wells and brought it up to date, but unfortunately this is just a shambles of a film that you will be wishing was over about half way through. The book has been mangled beyond recognition into something that is typical big budget Hollywood cinema fodder. Once the ending comes you just feel relieved that it's over.
So what's wrong with it? Well there's a number of things...
First of all the kids. I know it's one of Spielberg's trademarks, but really, this film would have been so much better without them. The youngest (Dakota Fanning) is a screaming little brat of a girl who you wish would just be atomised by the aliens at the very beginning. She screams and shouts her way through the film and it's difficult to feel anything but annoyance at the amount of screen time she's given.
The older child is just as annoying. He fulfils the obligatory part of male moody teenager. Not only does this moron go off driving his father's car in the middle of the night he also does possibly one of the most stupid things possible. He wanders, unarmed, into the centre of a gigantic fight between the army and the alien invaders because "it's his destiny". Tom Cruise, ever the useless father figure, lets his son go, and by now you will be hoping that the useless kid has gone for good, but no, he miraculously survives everything and reappears at the end. Can I just mention that there were no kids in the original film.
What else, well the special effects are completely overused, the film stalls at a scene in the middle in an underground house for what feels like a month (yes, it's painfully long) and the ending is abrupt and unsatisfactory. I could go on but you get the idea. Do yourself a big favour and go and read the book instead.