Its the Dysfunctional Family, Stupid

Rating: 3/10 (12 May 2006)

It has been suggested that people are staying away from MI-3 because of Cruise's idiotic brainwashed Scientology comments, his stupid juvenile behavior with his latest teenie bopper love, his over the top screaming and so on. But I'll bet that the real reason they are staying away is that most of them saw "War of the Worlds" and like me, couldn't stomach the idea of sitting through 2 hours of such stomach churning drivel again. Don't get me wrong, I don't hate Tom Cruise, despite his often ridiculous personal behavior. (I loved "Last Samaurai" and still love to watch Anne Heche, Angelina Jollie, Billy Bob Thornton, even Charlie Sheen and they all are complete Hollywood flakes, too.) No the real problem with "War of the Worlds" goes so much deeper than a bad acting job by Cruise. In fact, they properly should have renamed this movie "The Most Dysfunctional Family on the Planet Earth, Suffers Total Psychotic Meltdown During Alien Attack." That would have been a more honest and descriptive title. When I went to see "War" I was actually expecting to watch a story at least somewhat reminiscent of the famous H. G. Wells classic, "War of the Worlds," silly me. There is almost no similarity whatsoever between the Wells classic and this horrible piece of crap. (except perhaps that there are actually aliens and their machines have three legs, after that it becomes pretty much some Hollywood flake's bad acid trip.) The true problem with this awful movie is that is should have been all about an alien invasion, instead it degenerates into a horrible parody of the worst examples of modern American family dysfunction. I live in a society where the family is not only respected but even revered as a vital instrument to ensure the survival of each member. We respect the family unit exactly and especially because of the protection it offers to all when disasters, (like alien invasions) happen. In the movie theater here there was at first some nervous laughter at the unbelievable selfish, neurotic and ego-centric manner each of the characters dealt with the crisis by viciously turning on each other, the only people they had for support. But by the end all humor was gone and only embarrassed disgust remained. The alien plot was forgotten and everyone could only comment on how utterly insane and self destructive the "crazy gringos" were. Forget what George Bush says about, "...they hate us because we love freedom and democracy." The world hates America because of what Hollywood sends around the world in movies such as "War of the Worlds" as an image of the American family and American life. Most of us find that type of totally self indulgent behavior to be social insanity and moral suicide. It is simply beyond our capacity to even imagine such self destructive behavior, in fact it is a horror worse than the aliens themselves. I gave it a three which seems high now that I look back. If the aliens had actually killed the obnoxious little bastard, Cruise's son, I would have given it a "4" If the aliens had also gotten the shallow and vacuous Cruise, his neurotic screaming daughter, as well as the glib, social climbing mother and gutless step father, it might have rated a "6".