Ok, so I just watched this movie twice in a row and am slightly tired, however, I will try and write the best review I can, so let's begin.
If you're planning on paying $8.50 to see this movie, especially if you plan on seeing it with multiple people, let me do you a favor.
There, now you've seen 90% of the movie and your money isn't going to fund a dirty scientologist! If you haven't seen Batman Begins or Mr. And Mrs. Smith, personally, I feel that your money would be spent much more wisely viewing either of those.
First off, there wasn't one character through out the entire film that I felt any sort of sympathy for or could empathize with in the least. Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise) is a complete jackass and doesn't perform a single redeeming action through out the film. Robbie Ferrier (Justin Chatwin), Ray's angsty, rebellious son, who doesn't care much for his father, isn't developed at all and his part could've been erased from the movie entirely and it would not have detracted at all from the experience, but might've actually made the film more enjoyable. Rachel Ferrier (Dakota Fanning) is Ray's 10 year old daughter that apparently has a host of disorders, such as a shy bladder, claustrophobia, and the inability to stop whining or stop squealing at the top of her lungs for more than 2 minutes in any scene she's in. Ogilvy (Tim Robbins) was probably my favorite character in the film (besides the narrator, Morgan Freeman, which we never see) solely on the fact that he's Tim Robbins and was a crazy redneck that I would've liked to see do more crazy redneck things, but instead settled for letting Tom Cruise control him in every situation. The characters are completely hollow, they don't get developed at all, which is where the lack of empathy comes in.
Now let me give you a brief synopsis. The film begins by portraying Ray Ferrier as a blue collar dock worker coming home from a hard day of work where his ex-wife Mary Ann Ferrier (Miranda Otto) and her new husband, Tim (David Alan Basche), drop the kids off because they are heading to her mother's. There are roughly ten minutes between the beginning of the film and the arrival of the aliens. In this time frame, Spielberg is able to establish a solid wall between audience and characters, as well as establish all 3 of them as unsympathetic characters. We are then stuck with these 3 characters for the remainder of the film. Once the aliens show up and start blasting everything to ash, Ray and his family decide to get the fuck out of Dodge. They hop in their minivan (which is apparently indestructible and creates passages for you to drive through regardless of the disaster) and cruise to his ex-wife's house which is far enough away that their power is still on (oh yeah, you get bashed over the head with the concept of an EMP through out that first 10 minutes as well) which means that refrigerator and freezer would still be running, however, apparently the couple doesn't keep any food in their house as all that the 3 have to eat is a box filled with a variety of condiments from Cruise's house. From there the film continues a downward spiral of Cruise trying to keep his family together during a bunch of silly scenes that are absurd even as far as movie standards go. Eventually, it seems as though the writers realized that this film wasn't really going anywhere and decided just to end it thinking it wouldn't ever make it to the big screen. Oops!
Alright, so I've stated my major gripe of character development. The next problem I saw with the film occured to me during the second viewing and quickly started irking me more and more. Every other shot in the film is an extended close-up of either Cruise's face or else Dakota Fanning's face. Yes, I know they are great big movie stars and we should worship and emulate them at every chance. I guess it didn't really occur to Spielberg that the audience might want to view the GIANT FUCKING ALIENS KILLING BOTH EARTH AND THE HUMAN RACE SIMULTANEOUSLY WHILE TEARING A PATH OF DEATH, DESTRUCTION, AND MUTILATION EVERYWHERE THEY GO instead of just staring at Tom Cruise's kisser as he watches them. This leads to multiple scenes where the audience doesn't get to see anything but a couple people standing around listening to the sounds of the insanity that exists around them having their own little discussions. It was like they couldn't decide whether to make it a dramatic story about a family or whether they should make it a Bruckheimer movie and just have lots of explosions and lights with little plot or any real substance. It came up short on both ends. Also, while I did enjoy watching the aliens destroy little packs of tiny, screaming humans, you never really get a feel for the global scale of the invasion, to me it had a "U.S.A is the world!" feel.
Another problem was how poor the basic narrative was of the film. When you take a look at what action actually went on in the film, it's terribly boring and weak, had they woven a couple storylines together they might've come up with something much more compelling. Instead, we just get a random series of events that just left me with a feeling of "Oh." I felt the whole thing was extremely hollow and didn't really go anywhere, similar to this review. Then you view the end and leave the film thinking "Did they really end the movie that way thinking it was a good idea? That's it?"
Finally, there were just too many moments that left me either rolling my eyes, groaning, or flat out laughing at how cheesy they were. It seemed like every scene involving anyone in the military could've been replaced by a clip of Spielberg sitting in a chair saying "Hey guys! I'm Steven Spielberg. I made Saving Private Ryan, that was a good movie!" The major turning point scene involving Tom Cruise reminded me of the same way I felt when in AvP I saw a human female running alongside a Predator while a wall of fire blazes behind them.
---Side note which contains somewhat of a SPOILER---
For some reason, the second time I saw it, there's a comment made by Tim Robbins that really bugged me. He tells Cruise about how the Japanese took a few of them down, therefore they should be able to as well! I guess the Japanese must really hate the rest of the world and were waiting for every country to be wiped out before killing all the aliens so they could have the entire world to themselves or something, because if they're able to contact Japan to find out that they took some down, it seems somewhat logical that Japan would inform everyone else how to take them down? Instead the Japanese are big jerks that like to keep secrets! Hurrrrrr. Anyway, that comment ends up seeming like it should lead somewhere, but is quickly ignore and the film continues. Also, Tim Robbins and Tom Cruise end up having a giant fight because Tim Robbins wants to shove his axe into the aliens tentacled-eye and Cruise thinks this is a bad idea. So what happens? Cruise decides to kill Robbins and chops up a different tentacled-eye with the axe by himself a minute later.
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Anyway, the fellows I shared the first viewing with didn't seem to care all that much for the movie, however, they didn't seem to have quite such a distaste for it as I have. I believe everyone I was at the second viewing with, however, enjoyed the film quite a bit so take this review, as with any, with a dumptruck filled with grains of salt.
I added some links over there on the right ------>
because hey, links are fun! The first two are the free web space I get for 2 more years that I use essentially only for file and image hosting, one day I may do something with them. I signed up for two of them because, well just because. Similarly, a domain registerring service had free registration of .info domain names for 1 year, so I decided to take full advantage of it and register 20 free domain names, however, I only have a few months left with them. They are:
brokendown.info
geekamerica.info
intheclear.info
myonlyfriend.info
soawake.info
schmapnschmazz.info
schmap.info
schmapnshmazz.info
flawedperfection.info
dongs-central.info
numberonewangchungfan.info
asspennies.info
unfun.info
dropjaw.info
toomuchoftoday.info
fifteenminutes.info
25degreesnorth.info
pooter.info
butt-trumpet.info
buttslol.info
buryyourhead.info
everythingsucks.info
mathrock.info
spazzcore.info
Yes, there is at least some form of logic one way or another behind why I picked each of those domain names. The audioscrobbler link is a Winamp plugin that keeps track of songs you listen to, similar to the way iTunes does it but it publishes it online automatically and gives you some nifty stats. The next 3 are all superb folks that have blogs that I just discovered have blogs, so you should read them. Time to try and grab 3 and a half hours of sleep or so before heading to an employee meeting tomorrow. I'm supposed to go see Bewitched at 1:35 tomorrow as well, so stay tuned for a review of that, as I'm sure it will be fantabulous. Perhaps I'll try and catch up on a couple other reviews of films I've seen this summer such as The Perfect Man, Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, or The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D.
Faber out.
