Well...this movie was a disappointment...

Rating: 5/10 (14 August 2005)

I am and will be a fan of Spielbergs movies, but he missed with this one, and he is not alone (see George Lucas). Movies in general, in particular American movies have lately just not been very good and they have been "dumbed down" to the lowest common denominator of thought. It seems to me that this is the direction movies are going in...why? They make money, plain and simple. All of the uses of special affects have taken the attention away from good story writing so that I can be impressed with a great visual, it is very frustrating. That being said, I suppose this was the idea and the market the movie was catering to.
This movie actually isn't the bottom of the barrel, but the storyline is thin and at times comical. The scene where Bobby tells Cruise "dad, let me go I need to see this" (Why did he have a fascination with dying by an alien?, More importanty, htf did he survive?), the coincidental run-in with a madman who wants to destroy the aliens with an axe, the glaring lack of information from the outside world...the list could go on and on. Really there was not much content, just watching some guy and his family run from aliens, very little build up, and cookie cutter characters, even the way in which they killed an alien was unclear. The one positive, outside of the effects, was that they kept the standard comedy scenes you normally get to a minimum and early enough so that it wouldn't affect the mood too much.
It is too bad that Spielberg slipped with this, because it could have been a remarkable movie with staying power. Instead, it is a ho-hum, and unremarkable movie.