Pierce Brosnan, for example, pulls an amazing imitation of a '50s scientist. He even gets to give one of those wonderfully dopey lectures so popular in '50s sci-fi movies. And many others. It's sort of a shaggy dog of a movie that contains plenty of funny scenes. It almost feels as if all the big scenes are missing.
Battle scenes are over all too quickly, without any sense of suspense.
When we're supposed to be seeing the Martians overtaking the Earth, we just get a bunch of bulbous-headed little green men jumping around like grasshoppers, zapping everything with their toy guns. Somehow I expected more surprises from the actual attack itself. And maybe my ambivalence at seeing a herd of cattle on fire has something to do with seeing cows fly in Twister . But part of the charm of the original trading cards series came from just how awful the Martians were. They destroyed practically everything we valued.