Rooting for the Creatures

Rating: 3/10 (26 April 2006)

War of the Worlds starts well, very well. Slowly and meancing. And before you know it, you are laughing at the holes in this mishmush of technical virtuosity. We were waiting for the de rigueur scene in which Tom Cruise runs into the camera. Huzzah! We didn't have to wait long. As soon as Tom runs, the plot begins to turn sour and stupid, and this one does it in spades. Tom seems to have the only working vehicle on the East Coast, but he is able to get gasoline when there is no electricity--well, not exactly so, for the power outages caused by the creatures from who-knows-where are very selective indeed. A diner here, a home there, a whole community there. And the dreary refugees, sans children except the winsome Dakota Fanning, head relentlessly east for. . . well, I don't know why. I guess the creatures didn't want Boston. Guess they'd heard of Harvard. Or else they came from MIT. And then they must all cross the only ferry that connects life from death or vice versa, and getting on the ferry is absolutely essential for survival--unless you happen to get on it, in which case it becomes the Poseidon and overturns everyone into the frigid waters of the . . . well, I'm not sure what body of water. But it is snowing outside, so one assumes it is winter, but the water doesn't seem to hurt or freeze. What the heck is Spielberg thinking?! This is nonsense. And then the safest place to be ends up being the basement of a nineteenth century farmhouse that the creatures just don't have the heart to destroy because it contains the mad eccentric. And Tom tries to prevent his son from going with the army to be a man, and this kid clearly heads into complete annihilation, only to show up, of course, at the front door of his pregnant mother's tony Boston townhouse that is of course unscathed by the devastation overtaking the rest of the world. This is cinematic drivel and incompetence of the first order. Much money and much talent was expended on this project, only to insult our intelligence or else expose Spielberg's increasingly-suspect judgment. I felt as if this thing were directed by the mad King Lear, lurching around the world of bombastic explosives, but mad, mad, mad. He's lost touch with reality. I at first thought, "Well, thank goodness it's better than the 1950's laughfest," but within half an hour, you're laughing even harder at the plot holes. You just can't fault the special effects. But everything else is junkier than wreckage along the freeways. An utter waste!