Grade:  C

Director:  Steven Spielberg		Released:  July 2005
Writer:  Josh Friedman, David Koepp, from H.G. Wells's novel		MPAA Rating:  PG-13
Players:  Tom Cruise, Justin Chatwin, Dakota Fanning, Tim Robbins, Miranda Otto		Running time:  116 minutes

Ratings System

A film like War of the Worlds is intended to manipulate the audience, to manufacture emotions like fear and sorrow.  Fine, I get that.  But when a film manipulates you one way, and then another, for the sake of any given scene and at the expense of continuity and intelligent plotting, you don't have a film anymore, you have a collection of scenes, or set pieces.  That's all this movie is, a collection of scenes which never come together to form a tight and coherent whole film.

As an example, the film goes to great lengths to portray Ray (Cruise) as an awful father to his children.  He doesn't know any of his daughter's lullabies and he goads his son into arguments.  He barely cares about anyone other than himself.  Yet, anytime there is death and destruction he goes to great lengths to protect his daughter from seeing it, constantly telling her to close her eyes and not look or listen, at one point blindfolding her.  Would the same father who calls his son a "dick" and doesn't care if his daughter has food to eat be so concerned with preserving her innocence?

<seinfeld-voice>And how about these red vines?  What kind of mystery plant is this?</seinfeld-voice>  Apparently they're made from, well, you know ... but what is their purpose?  Would have been nice if Spielberg bothered to explain what their function was.  As it is, their only function seems to be to creep out the audience.  Sorry, not good enough.

Tim Robbins?  I like him as an actor, but not in this movie.  His character is strangely written, and his acting paled in comparison to what Cruise, Chatwin, and Fanning were doing.  He was a weak caricature from start to finish, and did not fit in this film.

The most offensive conceit of the picture is Spielberg's notion that everyone is obsessed with 9/11.  He uses it in an attempt to make people emotional about his movie.  I've seen films that included 9/11 in the story, or mentioned or referenced it in some way, but War of the Worlds is the first movie to whore it out for the purpose of audience manipulation.  Shots included walls of missing persons flyers, people covered in ash, and tattered clothing falling from the sky.  Imagery so closely tied to 9/11 that Spielberg may as well have used documentary footage in place of those shots.

The more I think about it, the less I like this movie.

- crocoPuffs