What the...?

Rating: 1/10 (3 July 2005)

Could this have been any greater of a waste of my time? This was little more than yet another vehicle for Cruise to be ... Cruise. No acting involved (as usual), just Tom being the usual "Tom character".
* Characters whom I didn't care if they lived or died. Whining, screaming Dakota Fanning; hateful son whose name I never did care enough to learn; bad father Cruise; bitchy ex-wife and limp step-father.
* The flag waves at the start, ribbons unfurled, the statue of The Patriot in Boston, Robbins denying that Japan could ever solve a problem before the US ... all we were missing was the apple pie.
* The aliens start disintegrating people by the hundreds, and we can assume from what we are told to be the magnitude of the attack, by the millions. Yet, halfway through the film, they start to harvest them for their blood?!? What the hell is the point of that? What's more, the red-vein-vine that they cover the Earth with has the exact same vulnerability to our bacteria as the aliens themselves? Come on. And they harvest them only a handful at a time? Sheesh.
I have to stop here. Mentally regurgitating this film is upsetting my stomach.