laughable ... you will groan out loud at its stupidity

Rating: 3/10 (27 July 2008)

The more I think about this piece of insulting rubbish the more indignant I get. Thank heavens I saw it on the box and didn't pay for the experience. This has every disaster film cliché in the book... bickering family members, mad-eyed stranger desperate to sabotage everyone's survival, heroic military, lone daddy surmounting impossible odds, cloying happy ending... and, as everyone else points out, a litany of plot holes and anti-climaxes. I was laughing at the silliness of it all. Nothing was believable, least of all docker Tom Cruise and his ethnic 'best mates'. The allusions to 9/11 were obvious...crass even. And the ham-fisted attempts at some kind of lame-brain critique of the war in Iraq were juvenile (the US army have to be seen at the end as delivering the final blow, completely missing the point of the whole story). Quite frankly you wish the worst on this dysfunctional family, at the mercy of aliens who look like cats caught in a rain shower. The final scene leaves you feeling cheated and insulted, as the mother and in-laws emerge to a ludicrous reunion from a pristine house....with the lights on! Yep, it's the end of the world but the electricity still works. File under Independence Day as 'for undemanding 10 year old boys only'.