Just Plain Stupid

Rating: 4/10 (12 July 2005)

Spielberg used to have it.Cruise never did. He's been playing the same character since The OUTSIDERS. Proof of this is in the way his character in WOTW leaves his dockworker job all smiles and practically skipping. (Then, in a moment of extreme mood swings, he becomes angry dad and throws a baseball through a window.) As for Spielberg, he proves he's still the master, all right. The master of filming actors as they look off camera at events we the viewer apparently are not worthy of. These scenes must take up at least 50% of this awful film's running time. Roland Emmerich and M. Night Shamalayan (two horrible filmmakers in their own rights) do a better job of ripping of Spielberg than Spielberg does.
Enter Tim Robins, convenient backstory supplier and resident weirdo. Like Cruise's unexplainable shift in character at the film's opening, Robins goes from gun toting wardog to whimpering coward with no strong answer as to why.
I realize this is an alien film yet I can only suspend my disbelief so far and that car surviving the plane wreck is just asking way too much. It's as bad as shots of people waiting for the opening ground to reach their feet before moving out of the way, just so the director can get some use out of his dolly. WOTW is packed with continuity problems and just plain ridiculous circumstances, such as Cruise scolding his son about not bringing food, while they are in someone's kitchen. Does mindless summer fare have to be so, well, mindless? This movie is a flat-out insult to any intelligent film-goer. I'd rather see the straight to video, C. Thomas Howell version. At least that one should be good for a laugh. I was too angry at this WOTW to find anything amusing about it.