Great summer blockbuster - but nothing more

Rating: 7/10 (9 July 2005)

I read somewhere that Spielberg is incompetent of bad film-making... and its true! But then again, this is not his best film as it "scores" far from Jaws, Jurassic Park etc.
I think people were disappointed by the movie and other people will definitely be after seeing it due to the fact of the over-hyped grant promotion that it got because Cruise and Spielberg are the 2 most powerful men in Hollywood. They over-promoted the film because they want to make money - Hollywood is a business at its core - its money-driven and not artistically-driven.
Spielberg - as I wrote at the first sentence of this comment - cannot make a bad film... W.O.W. is great technically: great sound and visual effects that are realistic, satisfactory acting but a mediocre script and maybe a bad adaptation from the book does not push the film to classic status (i.e 9 or 10 rating) but it goes up to 7 or 8 rating.
Previously I used the term "mediocre script" and I would like to explain: the movie is filled with little silly "convienences" that are very distracting if you are awake at the time of watching the film and of average intelligence. For example: how is the car of Ray Ferrier (Cruise) still in one piece when he comes out of his wife's basement (everything else is destroyed).
Other flaws of the film are the few unexplained pieces of the plot: i.e was Ray Ferrier the cause of the fall of the alien's shield? and, why are the aliens spraying blood all over the show? Somebody could argue that the ending is also a flaw but for those who know the book probably didn't mind it.... I actually found it interesting but I think its a bit too sudden and generally out of the pace of the whole film.
All in all, I know I gave a big list of flaws above but this movie is so well crafted that it still manages to score a 7 rating from me.