Weak, pointless effort

Rating: 3/10 (30 June 2005)

As the film ground to its flat, unimaginative ending, and I and the rest of the audience rose stiffly from our seats, and walked down the long hallway through the multiplex to emerge into the bright sunlight of late afternoon New Mexico, I realized what a useless, pointless waste of money and effort this new War of the Worlds is.
Early in Spielberg's career I became an enormous fan of his work, eagerly anticipating every new effort he would involve himself in. I greedily ate up his television movie, Duel, and Jaws and Close Encounters and Sugerland Express were revelations. His promise seemed unlimited. The first Indiana Jones film is an unqualified classic.
Then, he seemed to begin to disappoint. Was he being given too much freedom? Was he too sure of himself? Too self-indulgent? While ET is considered his masterpiece, didn't it also show his increasing penchant to pander to his audience, indulging in sentimentality? After a while I really started disliking his films, especially when he tried to make 'serious' films like Empire of the Sun, which I walked out on halfway through. I particularly detested A.I. which I also walked out on in the last ten minutes. Did Spielberg really think he could take over from Stanley Kubrick and do him the honor of completing his lost project? How sad. Spielberg is to Kubrick as Margaret Mitchell is to Tolstoy.
How empty one feels after sitting through this War of the Worlds. How pointless; what a waste. I actually felt sorry for the crew of the film, spending days working on some absurd minor shot of alien destruction.
Please Mr. Spielberg, take a weekend off and rent DVD's of De Sica's Bicycle Thief, and Umberto D. Now that's real film-making. How do I know the difference? Your're moved afterwords, and you don't feel empty, that you've wasted two hours...
But I don't think he's going to change his style now. I can only imagine the sentimental mess he's going to make of the '72 Olympics tragedy.