War of the Worlds
Rated PG-13

If you're going to re-interpret and modernize H.G. Wells' "War of the Worlds," you should think long and hard about why you're doing it. Yes, it's a classic work of science fiction, still relevant today, it's got bold action and vicious monsters, mighty machines and a timeless end-of-the-world storyline. Indeed, "War of the Worlds" was a seminal work of science fiction that's shaped our collective imagination for the last century and gave birth to the whole genre of alien-invasion tales.

But that's exactly the problem: every alien-invasion movie and book of the last hundred years has been a remake of "War of the Worlds." And H.G. Wells, may his brilliant mind rest in peace, was not Shakespeare; it's not as if there are subtleties of language and character that audiences can delight in reliving. No, Wells painted with broad strokes of Martians and heat-rays and carnage, so if you want to belly up to the War of the Worlds bar, you should have something new to offer.

Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise most assuredly do not offer anything new, producing neither a compelling modern invasion movie (like Shyamalan's Signs) nor a historically accurate reconstruction of the book (as recently attempted by the concurrently-produced H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds, which was just released straight to DVD; see www.waroftheworldsmovienews. com). It's slick and often scary, but falls flat from a failure of imagination and lack of purpose.

Tom Cruise is solid as the world's worst dad, but Spielberg fails to deliver the wonder of Jurassic Park, the vision of A.I. or the sheer style of Minority Report-all of which were deeply flawed movies in their own right, but at least felt fully-formed and knew what they were about.

This lack of any defining strengths allows Spielberg's typically condescending style of bluckbuster storytelling to come to the fore; thus the story is full of heinous gaps, and the characters interact as if dictated by The Hollywood Director's Handbook of Human Clichés.

After the aliens destroy all electronic equipment, causing all the cars to stall instantly on the road wherever they are, Cruise and kids manage to find a working car and have no trouble driving out of town and halfway across two states-because somehow, none of those stalled cars in New Jersey or New York happened to block the road. And then they're almost murdered by a mob because they have a working car, even though the mob is at a ferry terminal next to a ferry which is full of working cars-don't think about it, you'll hurt your head and besides, Steven doesn't think you're smart enough to notice.
Even more irritating was the inevitable substitution of the threat to humanity and all civilization with the threat to the family. Sure, the fate of humankind was given lip service, but it was clear the central story was about the perils one family faced from the outer-space invaders.

I hate this maudlin, Western, family-centric garbage. If the world is ending, if the Martians are here and they've brought their big guns, then surely for once in our sad, pathetic, Earth-worm lives we can look up and see the big picture-not spend our last few minutes bickering with our ex-wives, bonding with our sons and learning what kinds of food our whiny, young daughter likes. Oh, but the holy family! What could possibly be more precious! Sure, the world is being terraformed (martiaformed?) to suit the Martian's whims, but at least the minivan works!

Gag me.