Insultingly stupid

Rating: 2/10 (13 July 2005)

I haven't written a review in a long time, but this movie was such a let-down I just had to post.
I don't care if this is an homage to the original. I don't care if some people insist it relates to the current state of terrorism in our world. Blah Blah Blah. All I care about is this movie's intrinsic value in and of itself, and to that extent it fails miserably.
The screenplay is almost non-existent. Horrible alien machines attack. People scream and run. Well, that's about it. No, really, that's about it.
In between scenes of incredible boredom, Spielberg intersperses scenes of incredible plot holes. The amount of action that makes absolutely no sense is staggering. In fact, virtually NONE of it makes any sense.
My favorite example: Tom C is trying to get his daughter to Boston to bring her to his wife (whom he has absolutely no reason to believe ever made it to Boston) He and his daughter get captured, in NYC, by an alien machine. A short while later Tom manages to blow up the machine, and TA-DA! in crashes to the ground in (would you believe it?) -BOSTON. Say what?
Stuff like this makes you want to hurl bricks at your screen.