Bore Of The Worlds

Rating: 6/10 (7 July 2005)

Following on from 'Close Encounters of The Third Kind' and 'E.T.', Spielberg once again casts working class America against other-worldly beings. This time however there are no tender moments shared over M&Ms or sweetness and light in the mother-ship. These are some hard, tough creatures who have had the technology and knowledge to plot against us for quite some time. Quite why they were plotting against us or regarding our planet with envy was never explained but worse than that, which was also unexplained, was why such an obviously advanced civilisation did not heed the basic quarantine/bio-hazard rules that we puny humans follow when we go to new environments. Perhaps viruses never evolved on their home-world, I don't know but it was an unconvincing and sudden ending to a movie which was only held together by its special effects and the outstanding performance of Dakota Fanning. I need day no more about her. It was almost painful to see Tim Robbins sink to his character in this movie; a shell-shocked lunatic with a shotgun and penchant for violence which would desperately worsen his situation rather than better it. Tom himself is of course on 'Cruise' control (sorry, couldn't help myself) and there are plenty of 'running' scenes (a la opening of Vanilla Sky) - something which seem compulsory for his movies these days, always with the running! The movie started well and built up tension but once the aliens exposed their machinery, we entered into a series of set pieces with the main characters constantly just escaping (by millimeters in some places) their deaths at the hands of the invaders. The fact that they consistently escaped while all others around them seemed to perish became very tiresome and unconvincing and the 'Lazarus'-type return from the dead of the son at the end was ridiculous and unnecessary and, at least for me, took away any little bit of consequence that the movie had. Even Morgan Freeman's voice-over seems bizarre in this. Worth seeing once on the big screen for all the flashy lights and explosions. Go with low expectations though! An empty, disappointing movie.