A big disappointment

Rating: 3/10 (1 July 2005)

Spielberg shouldn't be allowed to make science fiction films. He managed to take parts of the book and parts of the old movie and add in enough of his own nonsense to make something far inferior to either. He took the crazy curator from the book, give him some of the ideas of the artilleryman and the name of the scientist killed in the beginning of the book to make the only really likable character in the movie, brilliantly played by Tim Robbins, who is deserving of another Oscar for this performance.
Tom Cruise's character is a jerk who becomes even less likable throughout the movie; Dakota Fanning plays his screaming banshee daughter. They, with his very brave but equally stupid son, manage to survive to the end of this movie while everyone around them is being killed. There is no explanation how the son survived; I guess it was supposed to be a miracle. The real miracle is that so many other critics liked this movie that makes so little sense.
The aliens come down in little spaceships in flashes of lightning. Why in the lighting? No plausible reason. They use their big tripod machines to destroy everything. The machines were put there millions of years ago to prepare for this invasion. Why didn't they have the invasion millions of years ago when they first put the machines here? I guess because Spielberg wasn't here to film it then. Why didn't the bacteria that kills them now kill them back when they buried these machines millions of years ago? How did they go these millions of years without finding out about bacteria? If they're millions of years advanced beyond our technology, why don't they have spacesuits the way we do? Why did Cruise's character's ex-wife ever marry him in the first place? I could spend the day asking questions about things that happened in this movie that don't make sense, but who would want to read that? If you haven't read the book, if you haven't seen the old movie, then maybe this movie is for you. The special effects are good, but don't look too closely or they won't make sense either (i.e. the monster coming up in the river, under the boat). Actually, Tim Robbins is the only reason I didn't rate this move a 1. His acting is really good.
What made the old movie and the book both so good was that the story was believable; it was something that could actually happen. They also had some good protagonists that we could identify with and care about as they tried to survive the alien holocaust. This movie has neither of those. There are too many flaws. Too many people know things they would have no way of knowing. Too many people act in ways that people would not act. The special effect violate the laws of physics as well as common sense. This movie could easily have been so much better if Spielberg hadn't glammed it up to try to impress people with nastiness, the way he did with bugs and spiders in his lost ark movies. I was more than disappointed by it. It made me angry.