Very unrewarding

Rating: 6/10 (29 June 2005)

This movie is simply a Jurassic Park style movie (great!), with an Independence Day scenario (lame), with an ending about as satisfying as that of Signs (terrible) and an ending about as well planned out, founded and explained as that of Vanilla Sky (absolutely horrendous). I think the most apt analogy is the train analogy. There's beautiful scenery on this train ride, the journey is great, but once you get to the station... you wish you would have just saved your 12 bucks and spent the night at home watching one of the new Star Wars movies, (shot against a blue screen) Ithink the acting was great for the most part. I maybe would have recast that kid who played the son, Robbie. The Morgan Freeman voice-over was a very lame introduction. The film itself was beautifully shot. Very well-directed and appealing to the eye, but there were so many holes in the telling of this story... There weren't holes in the story when I read H.G. Wells' version of it, but somewhere in the translation, many important parts of the story's telling just fell apart and got cut, I might wager a guess. I don't know if this next bit counts as a spoiler , but I've marked it anyway... Now, when the first city falls victim to the aliens... it sets off the EMP, right? and nothing electronic can work, right? so he changes the solenoid on the van and takes off (through very conveniently placed refuse). However, an issue arises when the van is involved in the second meeting with the aliens... The EMP just doesn't effect (affect?) it or something? The windows all stay intact. And the basement, where they hide in Boston... everything is destroyed. Entirely. Except for one little detail called STAIRS. Perfectly intact. still sporting what looks to be a brand new coat of paint. Completely untouched. Other than little things like this, and this movies complete utter failure to explain it's ending, or really establish how it ended and why, this movie is a pretty damn good thrill ride. Suspenseful and frightening at times. SOm beautiful social commentary at times. A beautiful story of one man who simply loves his kids, trying like Hell to keep them safe. Still not half as good as Batman though.