Meanders everywhere!

Rating: 4/10 (30 June 2005)

Having never seen the original, my point of view is going to be based on the movie itself, not its history. And my negative review is in no way tarnished by Cruise's strange behavior. Cruise and Jacko are probably brothers separated at birth but don't know it, but that's another issue.
I'm not sure who's to blame for this movie. Perhaps Spielberg had too many yes-men around him (or yes-women, let's be inclusive here). Perhaps the original WOTW is a lot like this and Spielberg liked it so much, this was meant to be his tribute. Whatever. This one stinks. Tributes shouldn't stink.
This movie had potential (and lotsa hype) but was utterly ruined by the "I'm-a-bad-father" subplot that the movie kept diverting to all throughout the film. Spielberg poured on the syrup at these points and it really did make me roll my eyes after awhile. The scene on the hill where the brother, for reasons that were not at all explained, just -had- to see what was going on on the other side of the hill actually made me squirm. His line about "if you love me you'll let me go" was straight out of the cornfields. Awful.
Dakota did a decent job but this certainly pales in comparison to other movies I've seen her in, like Man on Fire. As usual, Dakota and her brother play the smart-ass kids to the inept father. Never seen that before, have we Steve? Turn on the TV and there's hundreds of shows with characters like that already on.
Don't get me started on the basement scene. Completely unnecessary and went on WAY too long. The bit with the proboscis was just completely silly. Spielberg's version of horror/suspense I guess. One minute the aliens are out there tilling up the earth on a global scale with a horrific ferocity, the next minute they send this little wormy proboscis thing down into the basement to ever-so-gently poke around. Ooh, be careful, don't touch anything! Not to mention Farmer Ted thinking he's going to kill these things with a SHOTGUN of all things. Tim Robbins never could do scenes well with high levels of emotion, and he does it again here. Anytime he has to show intense emotion, the corners of his mouth curl down in a frown and that's as far as it goes. Like clockwork.
When the ship starts to come out of the ground, and even after it has come completely out of the ground, the people around it largely stay in the same spot and are STANDING THERE STARING AT IT. A three-legged behemoth... just came out of the ground from nowhere... 200+ feet tall with arms for days... and these geniuses are standing around waiting to see what it will do next? Only when it starts putting the smack down on everyone do they seem to give up any hope that it's E.T. and start to run away. Did they expect some sort of welcoming party instead?
The idea that thousands of those things, as huge as they are, could lie dormant under the ground without being detected. To accept that you would have to perform far more than suspension of disbelief and go straight for the alternate universe explanation. Pure laziness if you ask me, like Spielberg didn't give a damn about providing a plausible background for these creatures.
Lots and lots of little events that dead-end into nowhere. The friends who miss the boat. Who are they? Why should we care that they didn't make it? The reporters who are scrounging around for scraps of food as though they haven't eaten in weeks when the aliens just showed up LESS THAN A DAY AGO. We care that her sidekick is deaf why? The airplane. Why is it such a huge deal that one has crashed? Their minivan must have a protective shield of its own because the neighborhood-razing plane didn't put a scratch on their getaway car. Oh look! There's a neat little path for them to drive the minivan out of this mess.
For a bunch of alien invaders, talk about poor planning.... They sent waves of tripods to select locations and no ships to other locations, thereby offering people a place to run away to. And if they've "been watching us" for so long, wouldn't they have figured out beforehand that there are things on our planet that will kill them? Apparently not. They're smart enough to build these monstrous craft, smart enough to figure out how to navigate interstellar distances with these craft, but not smart enough to make said craft airtight or build leak-free suits (or any suits for that matter) in case there's some icky bugs that might kill them? Brilliant!
Ah anyway, I'd like my money back please. What a stinker! Spielberg blew it with this one by once again making the meat and potatoes of the film take a back seat to some sort of dysfunctional family crisis resolution. If Cruise had been the only main character, if his character had been more of a hero-type, if they'd thrown out the whole family bit, this would've been a lot better. But they didn't.
Did Spielberg just give up on this movie at one point and say to hell with it, this movie's too far gone to achieve redemption? It certainly looks that way. This film doesn't even look like a finished product. This looks like a whole bunch of plots thrown together before a good editor comes along and puts together a cohesive film.