good start, but it seemed the movie went on auto-pilot half way through

Rating: 6/10 (3 July 2005)

It might be because I had such high expectations and hopes for this film. I generally like a broad range of movies from art-house to pure Hollywood escapism / adventure. I went in with a fairly open mind, and at first it was really excellent! The build up with just hints of what was going on was engrossing. I like the perspective of the average personin the dark, afraid, not knowing at all whats going onEurope obliterated, Europe OK etc. Even cinemagraphically, Spielberg flerts with grainy / out of focus camera shots, or views of what the people see in their car mirrors, instead of spelling it all out. Also, not too much heavy handed foreshadowingthe "Dad, I got a sliver. But its OK, as my body will just push it out on its own" metaphor early on in the movie I thought was just enough of a nod and a wink to the audience.
But after that, it seemed to go on auto-pilot to "lets please everyone in the audience island." As a demographic who no longer gets excited about "oooh, will the hero die half way through the film", I just don't get into scenes like that anymore. I think I was 7 or 8, when I figured out that Cptn Kirk was not going to die in each episode. Then again, if you are 7 or 8, this is definitely for you! Especially being a Spielberg film, you just know none of the principle good characters will get killed (especially the chilled!), no matter how grim it looks. So on its own, it just isn't a great suspense vehicle, as there needs to be more e.g advance the plot in an interesting way, add another dimension to the character by revealing who they are through testing and dangerous conditions. The movie at times tried to show this, but it seems it just could not decide how much time and effort doing it. Should it be the purely amazing F/X film ? maybe a little. Should it be a study on how people respond at the end of the world (e.g. Last Night, or the new BattleStar Galactica ?) Yeah, some of that too. The problem is, that many littles does not add up to a lot. And that Tim Robbins scene ? WTF ? That's a minus sadly. He is a great actor, but this was a poorly written part.
Pluses ? The alien tripods. Although nothing new (flinging cars, huge explosions, bridges falling like wooden blocks), its well done.
The ending ? No where near as bad as AI. But then again, that's a hard one to top /bottom out on. Still, when the scene switches to the outskirts of Boston, I had this sense that there was an editing error. I never read the book, but it does seem like a tough nut to sell from a climax perspectivehow do you properly build up to an ending where tiny germs off camera kill the aliens, without making it look like the "Deus ex machina" that frankly, the ending is. The 50's B movie version of it kind of pulled it off in a cheesy self aware way, and I figured he would use Morgan Freeman's great voice to do the same. But alas, it didn't really work.
I saw 6 out of 10 and my partner says 5