Aliens blast everything except obnoxious characters

Rating: 4/10 (21 March 2007)

Invaders in spindly machines emerge, and just start ray-gun blasting everybody in sight, except for Tom Cruise. Tom plays a routine Spielbergian loser-hero, an obnoxious divorced dad with two punk kids who hate his guts. After the debut attack, most of what we see and hear is this dysfunctional band of twits shouting at each other in bouts of over-acting. You never identify with these characters, and hope the Martian Creatures zero in on them with disintegrator beams.
Spielberg drops the ball here with lazy, careless directing that simply is too lackadaisical to tell a coherent story. His skillful direction of Dakota Fanning: "Scream a lot." He was even more innovative with the rest of the cast, "Run around and look stupid." With the budget he has for this film, you'd think think things like a flaming jeep rolling by would be done better. It looks cheap and fake; this director is capable of better than this. There are scattered moments of brilliance: the machine looming over a hill as it attacked by jets is actually pretty cool.
The grand entrance for the machines was just to be different and clever, but the H. G. Wells story this is based on is turned inside-out by it, and the movie never bothers to get back on track, by explaining how and why the invasion was done this way. It ignores and leaves plot holes dangling, and just shows blasting, running, screaming, and random shots of blood everywhere. Another worn out trademark of S.S. is having the menace act comedic, so the invaders are morons too; example: The Three Stooge Martians stumble around a farm house, never noticing two imbeciles fighting only 10 feet away. Apparently, the invasion force didn't analyze Earth's atmosphere, and their laser operators could use some target practice. They fire volley after volley at Tom and keep on missing.
The film never connects any dots before its abrupt ending, but the audience realizes they don't care anymore about it, anyway. The film is little more than a loose-fitting patchwork quilt of scenes designed for a "Wow!" response. The film can be entertaining, but only on a "laugh at it" basis.