Not nearly as good as it should have been

Rating: 6/10 (2 July 2005)

Oh how the mighty have fallen. There was a time when the names Spielberg and Cruise guaranteed something out of the ordinary. No longer. Which is not to say that this is a bad movie. It's just that there is NOTHING special about. There is none of the wonder and inspiration that Spielberg is LEGENDARY for in his movies. While Cruise goes a bit against type by playing a real jerk, there is nothing original in his performance. What does separate this movie from the other end of the world disaster epics is the fact that it follows one family's struggle to stay alive. In fact, during scenes of either mass destruction or epic battles, Spielberg focuses on his characters' reactions to the situation. After all if you were in the middle of this, would you be standing there watching the whole thing, or would you be making dust trails for the horizon? So in fact the movie does have a strong "you are there" feel to it. But what works against this approach is the fact that there is not ONE likable character in this movie. Cruise is a jerk, his son is a punk, and Dakota Fanning as his daughter may very well be the most annoying child character in recent history. Not only does she not stop screaming for 2 hours, but she screams in an air raid siren type of way. Now a little girl probably would in fact do that in real life, but as an audience member watching the movie, you wish she'd get zapped. Which brings me to my next point. What is the point of the alien invasion? What are they here for? Their machines have been buried for a million years, so they've been planning this for a while. But for what? When the machines erupt, their ray beams turn whole cities of humans to dust. But later in the movie they capture people, cage them, suck their blood, and spray it like fertilizer. Why? Are they here to kill us or use us? Make up your minds! Maybe that plays into Spielbergs whole approach of being in the middle of it all and not really knowing what's going on. After all in a situation like this, the common man is not privy to all the answers. But as a moviegoer it's very unsatisfying. Finally this movie contains what may very well be the worst ending EVER!!!!!! The final 5 minutes of this movie, which I assume was meant to be the big emotional release, was laughable. It follows the standard movie rule that kids never die. But it's done so ham-handedly, I had to groan. Like Cruise's character, I am a divorced father. I see my children primarily on weekends. So at the end, when Cruise drops his kids off at his wife's front door, I laughed and thought "Well that was a helluva weekend." All this may make it sound like I didn't like the movie. But I did. I did like it. But if I had waited for video, I don't think I would've been missing anything. I am a movie FANATIC. I go to the movies at least 20 times a year, and have over 1000 movies in my collection. I go see just about anything. This is the first movie directed by Spielberg that I have seen in theaters since the original Jurassic Park. The last Cruise movie I saw in theaters was the first Mission Impossible. And that's a pretty sad statement considering that Spielberg and Cruise used to make movies that deserved and demanded to be seen on the big screen.