A great series of special effects

Rating: 5/10 (10 July 2005)

This movie is great for special effects! Houses explode, bridges rupture, people are disintegrated right before your eyes (or, sometimes, above your heads so all you see are the gently drifting bras and underpants).
Lots of flash boom bang action.
Somewhere in there was a plot, theme, and characters - but who cares? It was fun, fun, fun!
Tom Cruise emotes solely with his eyes, as usual, and plays the dysfunctional father of one or two kids (it was never clear whether the kids were his, or his wife's, or maybe rented for the day). Dakota Fanning is great as the spoiled rich kid who has everything but understands nothing. Eowyn (Miranda Otto) comes in at one point, pregnant by (we think) Faramir, only where is the gorgeous jewelry and costumes - and then one realizes: *this is a different movie*, only she's forgotten it. But she does live in the one neighborhood in Boston untouched by the aliens' destruction, and even as her son is able to walk through a battlefield unscathed, so she is able to live in a row house that is untouched.