Long movie about People with short attention spans!

Rating: 6/10 (20 August 2005)

I am not naive when it comes to plot devices, and I know that there was information that needed to be presented to us, the audience, but surely it could have been done in a way that didn't make the characters looking like people who were so criminally stupid that they did not deserve to live! They all had the attention spans of Goldfish! (appoximately 3 seconds.) It reminded me of a stand up routine about the same, with the comedian acting as the Goldfish, swimming in a circle ~ "The walls are closing in on me, - Oh look! A castle! The walls are closing in on me, - Oh look! A castle! (repeat at least two more times) It was the same pattern of behavior all the way through the movie. Race to the place where lightening has just struck 87 times and stand around, seeing how close you can get. Then - just to make sure we know how stupid they are, they start picking up the smoking pieces of rubble. When something starts exploding out of the earth, just stand around and back up slowly. Tom Cruise's character repeatedly stops to stare, with a kind of little boy, wonder, look on his face,and then suddenly remembers that he is in danger, and starts to run again.
...and I will add my name to the list who have complained about the video camera miraculously working. Pretty huge mistake to have made, especially since this is Spielberg we are talking about.
The characterization's are pretty good ~ for all of the out of the blue heroics, Cruise's character remains completely unlikeable. Dakota Fanning is heart-wrenching, I'm sure that there are a lot of people who can't stand the kid - but I think that she will have a long and illustrious career.
One thing that I really did like (although a lot of others have complained about it) is the way the special effects remain in the background. The movie isn't a huge light show. In fact the fact that the invaders were mostly unseen, and the focus was more on the destruction that was being shown, and the peoples reactions to that, really worked for me. Unfortunately, the only relationship I cared about was the one between the sister and brother.
Overall, I was wishing that I had waited for it to come on TV.
Lilly