2005 / 116 Minutes / PG-13
Reviewed by Ben Heckendorn

I would say the basic purpose of a movie review is to tell people whether or not a film is worth their time to go see. I mean, you’ve got to drive in the car, find a parking spot, wait in line, buy really expensive snacks, sit through 20 minutes of trailers and ads and then of course the movie itself. It’s a full evening, so hopefully the film is worth your trouble. Sadly, I’d have to say “War of the Worlds” isn’t. Why not? Well, because you’ve already seen it.

Oh no, I’m not talking about the 1953 version. No, the problem with 2005’s “War of the Worlds” is that it’s basically a montage of everything Spielberg’s ever done. In fact it’s almost like a $135 million dollar parody of a Spielberg flick. Even this film’s much-lauded “action set pieces” are pretty much all lifted from his earlier efforts, especially the “Jurassic Park” films. Ok let’s do a quick checklist:

1) Dysfunctional family with divorcees, check
2) Huge build-up sequence to the dinosaur, I mean alien tripod, check.
3) Overly long “hide and seek” scene where the hero(s) avoid being detected by (pick one) a) alien probe tentacle b) velociraptor in kitchen c) robot spider in apartment building, check
4) Endless shots of people looking at things in awe
5) Cars tossed into the air / water and people jumping out of the way of them

If I had to describe this movie in one word it’d be “lazy”. Sure some scenes are really well done, such as a very long take involving multiple angles of a car as Tom & Co escape a city, or a mob scene where said car is taken from them. But then everything else is something you’ve seen before, and usually it was a Spielberg movie to boot. It’s like they copy/pasted this movie together because it was easier on their super-tight schedule that way. Hell, there’s even a part where people are picked up off the ground by a machine and put into a floating “cage basket”, just like in “A.I.” (a vastly superior Spielberg sci-fi film, IMHO) Hell, they probably used the same prop! At least Teddy was in “A.I.” to kick some ass.

As with “Minority Report” critics are falling over themselves to praise this movie and herald it as “Spielberg’s best since Raiders!” (Raiders being apparently the gold standard of review comparison for every movie ever made, as well it should be) But hell I liked “Minority” a lot more than this, at least it seemed fresh and filled with IDEAS. Alright so I’ve established “War” seems like Spielberg ripping himself off. Now let’s get to all the other annoying stuff: (May contain spoilers, but again I’m not really recommending this film so who cares?)

1) Alien “EMF” (electro magnetic force) beams zap out all electronics in the opening attack, including whatever electronics were apparently in Tom Cruise’s 1960’s-era Mustang, causing it to stall out. All cars are dead. All electricity is off. A guy is taking photos but the foley department had the foresight to include the “grind grind” sound of a manual film advancement knob. However, a cheap-ass VIDEO CAMERA apparently still works because it would be cool for the guy using it to die, have the camera land on the ground and show the first round of deaths from its view screen. Sure.

2) I swear half this movie takes place in basements.

3) Ug this one pissed me off! Tim Robbins plays a psycho who lets Tom & Dakota hide out in his (you guessed it) basement while the aliens pass by overhead. He carries a shotgun in every scene. Anyway, after a couple “hide and seek” scenes with an alien sensor probe some real live aliens / velociraptors come down to check out the basement. Robbins then loads 1 FRICKING SHELL into his shotgun. So he carried it around unloaded while aliens were killing everything that moved above them? And then to kill 3 aliens he loads 1 shell? ??? The final insult is when he cocks the pump action to load the shell, he slides it down about 1 inch and then back up. Gee every other movie I’ve ever seen they have to pump it the full amount to get shells to load. I guess Tim Robbins is above that. I know it’s a nitpick but dammit it’s annoying. Like the glass with the .22 caliber bullet holes in Jurassic Park that were supposedly made by a shotgun and the fact it took about 1.5 seconds for a pump shotgun to make 3 of them.

4) Everything in this movie is about big things moving around and almost hitting the heroes. Tripod feet, cars, debris, propellers, whatever. It feels like it’s 1993 and you’re watching “Jurassic Park”. Or 1996 and you’re watching “Twister”. It just feels so dated now.

5) Come to think of it, this movie is basically “Jurassic Park” meets “Twister”. Really, that’s how I saw it. Honestly it could have used the Paxton touch.

6) In one scene Tom’s son wants to look over a hill and see the “War of the Worlds” Waves of tanks and other army vehicles are streaming in and fire and brimstone light up the sky. Tom stops him but the son stays anyways (See next item) Does the camera pan over the hill and indeed show us The War of the Worlds? No! Maybe some see this as a tasteful way of doing it, to just sort of HEAR the battle, but dammit! Correct me if I’m wrong but I’m pretty sure my ticket said “War of the Worlds” not “I Wonder What’s Beyond That Hill?” As Tom would say “Show me the money!”

7) Tom’s son character allegedly dies at one point. (See above) I mean, it’s either go down a hill with Tom or hang out at the top with the mile-wide wall of fire and the alien death tripods. The son, as far as we know, stays and is “dead”. So when he magically shows up at the end of the movie it’s pretty damn annoying. I’ll buy that crap in “The Mummy” but not something trying to be as important as this. One minute you’re thinking “Wow, Spielberg had the guts to kill off a son!” and the next you think “Oh wait he didn’t” It’s so improbable (at the end) I thought maybe Tom Cruise was like, “dreaming” his son was alive.

The aliens die at the end for the same reason as in the 1953 version (and I’m assuming the book) I almost wish they would have done something different with this - especially since it makes for such an anti-climatic ending. Sure it’s a cool “twist” the first time a movie ends that way but not the second. No, the second time it’s just lame.

I guess I could go on but why bother. I didn’t see “The Terminal” but this is definitely in my opinion Spielberg’s weakest film in a long, long time and what I would consider the first real disappointment of the summer (hell I even liked “Batman Begins” better) Hell I’ll even go so far as to say “Independence Day” was better. At least it was FUN! I really don’t think “War” will do all that much beyond opening weekend, but maybe at least Hollywood will learn something from that. The rash of remakes is bad enough, but filmmakers remaking their own stuff is downright creepy. You want people back in theaters, give us something original to watch! It’s pretty bad when there’s only a couple movies in a summer that AREN’T remakes. (”The Island” and “Stealth” come to mind, but that’s about it)

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This entry was posted on Thursday, June 30th, 2005 at 2:25 pm and is filed under Ben's Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.