A huge budget poorly written bore-fest

Rating: 1/10 (27 August 2005)

This movie is one of the biggest let downs ever made. This movie has one of the biggest budgets ever, yet it still fails to provide a decent portrayal of an alien invasion. The effects are beautiful, yes, but they are backed up by no substance in the acting or writing and often makes no sense at all. The movie starts out in New Jersey where Tom Cruise's ex-wife is dropping off the kids for the weekend. Cruise goes to investigate strange lightning or something and an alien emerges and attacks the crowd of people watching nearby. For some reason, Cruise is the only one (what?) who manages to escape the death beam (or whatever) and gets home to get his kids out of the city to get to his ex-wife's house because it is safer (huh?). Eventually, his quest for his ex-wife leads to him having to travel an insanely long distance to get to the city where she is. The son soon runs off to fight the aliens and runs off into a field full of aliens that is on fire (no really). Then Cruise hides in a basement with his 12 year-old daughter and some crazy guy (that is really creepy). Cruise the kills the guy with a shovel (I swear to god) in a (rather) desperate attempt to shut him up. After about an hour hiding in the basement they flee from an alien and single handedly kill one of the machines that an nuke didn't even manage to kill. Once they get to Boston, they see that the people of Baltimore are not harmed at all and that the aliens died from germs. The son is also safe at home even though he ran into a fiery pit of death and it was (of course) suspected that he was killed. In the end the worst part of this movie is the end. After a big action packed action thing (even I found that statement a little silly) the aliens die of germs and it just ends. This makes the end seem forced and may make you want to die, especially because you just watched a movie where they hide in a basement for half of it and then germs kill the aliens.