Not enough science fiction and too much on fatherhood

Rating: 5/10 (3 February 2008)

I want to see the monsters and the devastation not Tom Cruise leading his brats around and telling them over and over "everything is gonna be OK". Spieberg has made this mistake with many of his blockbuster scfi movies - the emphasis is always on "relationships".
Special effects here are pretty good but not amazingly so. The tripods seem to always be filmed at night and in a heavy fog.
I was disappointed that they didn't come up with a better reason for the martian's death. We all know they were killed off by microbes, but that's pretty ridiculous really. These super-advanced creatures would know all about that and have protected themselves.