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Views and Reviews -- War of the Worlds

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War of the Worlds




Ray Ferrier...... Tom Cruise
Rachel Ferrier...... Dakota Fanning
Robbie Ferrier..... Justin Chatwin
Director..... Steven Spielberg




War of the Worlds
is much ado about nothing at all. Never have so many spent so much for so little.

Okay, it wasn't really a bad film, but neither was it quite a good one. And, frankly, it's a little tough to figure out why. The acting is great. Cruise is perfectly solid what with his trademark intensity and all, he is far better than the role demands. The same might be said about the other star of the film. Dakota Fanning is still eerily talented, managing to imbue a role, that in the hands of a less skilled actor would have been reduced to 'Annoying Screaming Girl', with unexpected humanity.

The mechanics of the aliens are faintly ridiculous. Their technology is in the shape of big lumbering things with great mechanical tentacles flying about, causing all manner of mischief and malice. The aliens themselves, well, they're kinda puppy-cute. Which puppy-cuteness, when found in your basic planet destroying population-annihilating, big bad wolf aliens from another world, is bound to disappoint. The alien invasion bit has been done, you know many many times and far better in other films. So many times, while sitting in the my stadium seat I thought, 'Wait....deja vu...it's like I've seen this before,' only to realize I had seen it before. As in literally, seenitbefore -- in Signs and Independence Day to name just two.

Alien invasion movies are not really about the aliens. They are about how the invasions affect humans from the family level, to the brotherhood of man level. There is some very interesting human stuff going on in War of the Worlds. What happens when a guy, who is a divorced and mostly absentee dad, kind of a lout gets stuck with his teen and tween kids the weekend aliens try to take over the world? What happens is interesting and in the hands of actors like Cruise and Fanning, I would have been content to get a full 90 on that topic sans towering, spindly legged, planet destroying aliens.. What we get instead are a lot of long shots of our heroes and everyone else walking and then running from place to place. This in fact, may be the problem with the entire film, there is no real sense that any of what is happening up there on the screen actually matters, it's all gunfire and no impact. And then there are things that simply do not make any sense whatever. To the movies credit, I was at home before it occurred to me to ask the question. If the aliens need human blood to survive or whatever, why are do they seem bent on exterminating every mother's son of them?

No, War of the Worlds is not a bad movie; it's just -- there's no there, there.

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