War of the Yelling Family

Rating: 6/10 (26 November 2005)

Although I think a small handful of his films are gems, I'm not the biggest Steven Spielberg fan, and this film is a typical example why that's the case. Spielberg is someone who tends to be great at concepts and the "look" of a film, but his writing and directing tend to suffer from a plethora of peculiar problems; War of the Worlds is no exception (I know that Spielberg doesn't get a writer's credit here, but it's obvious that this is a Spielberg story and script--his marks are all over it). In my opinion, Spielberg is someone who should be in the film business as a lead technician--overseeing special effects, production design, cinematography, and so on. He's one of the best at those aspects. Judged on those elements, War of the Worlds may very easily get a 10, and if you're a fan of that stuff, you should definitely check this film out.
The first 10 or 15 minutes I actually thought were worth a 10 overall. The film begins closely parallel to the superior 1953 version. When we're first introduced to our stable of characters, the film is interesting. Tom Cruise's character is a bit different from his usual stock. He's a working class curmudgeon who, if this were 1953, could pass for Bruce Springsteen's father. The setting is oddly surreal. And the initial appearance of the alien menace is certainly gripping and intense.
But then we get more into characterization and a story meant to develop it, and the film goes into the toilet. The focus isn't really the alien invasion, its effect on humanity, or the science behind trying to understand the aliens and fight them, as was the focus in the H.G. Wells book and the George Pal film. The focus here is on Tom Cruise's character, Ray Ferrier, and--surprise surprise, given Spielberg--his kids, played by Dakota Fanning and Justin Chatwin.
Spielberg has never been someone who cares too much if his films make logical sense, as long as each scene has the "right affect" (and yes, I definitely mean "affect" there and not "effect"). Sometimes it can work, and I certainly am not averse to surrealism and dream logic, but this isn't a modern Asian genre film like Karisuma (1999), this is a film that should make logical sense. The worst offense here is that Cruise and his kids just happen to survive and be in the place they need to be in to perpetuate the story, even though most of the transitions from scene to scene would require machinations amounting to, " . . . and then a miracle happens". Sometimes we're shown the miracles--such as when they just happen to break through the police line to an escaping boat, and sometimes we're just given them, such as the fact that even though an airplane fell on the house (in a scene that seems stolen from Donnie Darko (2001)), the car remains unscathed--why? Because they need the car to get to the next scene. Likewise Ray Ferrier needs to be the only person in New York City outside of the military who can get a car running after the aliens disable all other devices that work on electromagnetic principles, such as electricity, telephone service, watches, and so on. Among the tens of aspects of the film that make no sense in this way are the fact that in the opening, one guy just happens to have a video camera that still works; there are people in the immediate vicinity of the opening scene, including Ray's kids, who seem to not have the faintest idea what is going on, even though a very visible "monster", hundreds of feet tall, just tore up half of Bayonne, New Jersey; and Ray and a number of other people seem to "just know" that the alien machines had been buried under the ground for hundreds or thousands of years. The film is littered with almost incoherent items like this.
But if the story and script were good, if the actors had been directed well, those incoherent aspects might not kill the film. For example, yeah, it makes no sense that someone has a video camera that still works during the opening scene, but it does provide an interesting way to see some of the action, so it is almost excusable.
Like always, Spielberg wants to make this a human story, centered on a family and their problems. The ingredients are there for it, and it might not have been a bad idea. But in trying to develop characterization, he makes just as many illogical, inexplicable leaps as he does elsewhere. Why does Ray's son suddenly want to run off with the military (who just happen to be in a ridiculous place at the time they're needed for this scene, by the way)? We're not shown anything that would ground or justify this for the character; in fact, the opposite seems to be true. Why is Ray's daughter an emotional basket case? We don't know, she just is, because Spielberg thinks it will make the film more emotional. Why wouldn't Ray tell his kids what is going on in the beginning? It seems the only reason for this is to perpetuate some tension in the film. Most of the "characterization" is along these lines.
Worse is Spielberg's direction of his cast. He seems to have told everyone to overact, and then overact some more, just in case the folks in the next town over couldn't hear them. There is a lot of yelling/screaming in this film. People yell no matter where they are. They yell at people to be quiet, otherwise the aliens might hear them, and then once they quiet them, the next scene has them yelling anyway. Everything is for maximum manipulation, including the clichéd John Williams score, but most of it doesn't work.