Jurassic Park, except with alien tripods instead of dinosaurs

Rating: 6/10 (2 July 2005)

No one wanted to love this movie more than me. War of the Worlds is a visual and technical masterpiece to be sure, but everything else pretty much fell flat. Instead of being drawn in by the story and its characters' plight, as I was with such films as Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Signs, I found myself completely uninterested in what was happening and who it was happening to. I thoroughly enjoyed the first CGI attack sequence that got the film off to a running start, but it wasn't long after that I began to realize that this wasn't going to be anything more than a Jurassic Park-type experience, except with alien tripods instead of dinosaurs. Spielberg did use some restraint by only showing the actual aliens twice in the film and by limiting what we saw to what Tom Cruise's character saw, but M. Night Shyamalan already perfected the technique of "understated horror" in the film, Signs. I won't even get into the forced "Party of Five" family drama that Spielberg unsuccessfully tried to kick-start several times during the film, with some intended dramatic moments that were just plain laughable. I'm still confused as to why the Ferrier trio complained about having nothing to eat other than peanut butter and condiments while they were standing in the ex-wife's kitchen, right next to a huge refrigerator. I guess I'll let that one slide. War of the Worlds is not a bad film by any means, it's just simply not as good as it could have been.