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.
