War of the Worlds

Directed by Steven Spielberg
Written by David Koepp (screenplay), Josh Friedman (screenplay), H.G. Wells (novel)

Where to begin?

I don't know what to say about this movie that you haven't already heard, except that Spielberg is a filmmaker who very much cannot make up his mind. The bad animation, bad stock footage, and bad voiceover (from Morgan Freeman, no less) at the outset of the film sets up a sort of late-60s b-movie schlockiness that the movie, with it's a-list "talent" and state-of-the-art visual effects, fails to deliver. Instead we're getting classy, top-of-the-line major summer actioner...right?

Other than the opening and closing animations and some dumb-looking helicopters and fighter jets, the effects are good...and that's pretty much the only positive thing I can say about this piece of crap. That and that there was something transcendantly glorious about watching Tom Cruise getting sucked into a giant alien sphincter, but enough about me.

A pastiche of pretty much every popular Spielberg movie of the last 15-or-so years, you can pretty much run down the list and point to the Jurassic Park scene, the Minority Report scene, the Saving Private Ryan scene. Also present is the problem that has very much plagued every one of Spielberg's "serious" movies (Schindler's List aside) - he can't decide if he's making a movie about Everyman, or about Thisonesingularandveryspecialman. He'll go halfway in one direction before suddenly turning around and going halfway in the other, never committing to either, and ending with an incredibly confused mess.

Try not to lose count how many times Cruise & Co. go from the verrrrrry back of a large crowd to the verrrrrrry front of a large crowd (then again to the verrrrry back of the crowd when the aliens begin to give chase), giving them a clear, front-row view of every single stupid event. Note the clear path around stopped traffic, hordes of people, and at one point airplane debris (from the jet that crashes right into their house, no less) always provided to their car - and not a scratch on it, by the way, even after the plane crashes into the house.

Note how Cruise magically stumbles onto the one car on Earth that works. See how nobody ever attempts to stop, or even flag down, said car - that is, until it becomes convenient to the plot, and even then, see how subtly (he sarcastily said) that's handled. Note how he just happens to run into some woman that he knows at exactly the right moment where it is the height of drama that they are separated, seconds later. Oh, the suspense when Cruise runs to stop his son from joining the Army (because, see, he's so angry and confused at the attack that he is reactionarily, if that's a word, dying to pick up a gun and kick some alien ass - how's that for subtlety?) at the exact moment where a hundred yards away his suddenly-mute daughter (a noxious Dakota Fanning) is about to be kidnapped by - get this - a concerned passerby. In short, try not to lose count how many times Spielberg will create some utterly artificial situation out of the clear blue sky in which to place his hero just so we can gasp, or sigh, or whatever respiratory reaction is most desirable from our respective demographics.

Then Tim Robbins appears, and the thought literally running through my head is, Oh my god, this movie is never going to end.

What feels like an entire third of the movie takes place in the Robbins character's basement, and I'm guessing it's supposed to be all suspenseful or something, based on the grunty faces everyone is making, and of course the overbearing BUM-BUM-BUUUUUUUMMM score.

The family finally ends up at the doorstep of ex-in-laws (I think), in a hoity Boston neighborhood with nary a broken pane of glass anywhere. As the family emerges one by one, not a scratch or bruise or arm in a sling among them, I joked to my friend, "Now the son!" And guess what? THERE HE IS. I am NOT KIDDING. Seriously, what next? "Rover! I thought you died when I was 12! I guess they really did send you off to live in the country!"

I can't believe I missed Family Guy for this.