Movie Review: War of the Worlds

For the first time, the Transplanted Lawyer reviews a first-run movie. Granted, the movie’s been released for about two weeks now, but still this is pretty recent for the blog. The review contains minor plot spoilers, nothing you couldn’t have figured out from the commercials.

It was certainly time to remake this movie; its earlier incarnation was fifty years old. The story is simple and not a huge departure from the century-old H.G. Wells novel upon which it is based despite its contemporary setting. Bookend narration by Morgan Freeman is taken almost exactly from the novel and despite Freeman’s stentorian and authoritative voice, the text he is asked to read weigh heavily with Victorian hubris.

Tom Cruise is a divorced father of a fifteen-year-old boy (Justin Chatwin, whose earlier work has been mostly on television) and a ten-year-old girl, Dakota Fanning. When their mother (the radiantly beautiful Miranda Otto) and stepfather drop the two off for a weekend with their father at his run-down New Jersey rowhouse, while she and her new husband spend the weekend with her parents in Boston, no one has a clue of the disaster about to happen. Aliens invade, and the movie follows the efforts of Cruise to reunite his family. Along the way, they spend considerable time in the second act of the movie in a basement along with a crazed Tim Robbins. The special effects are brilliant, credible, and often quite scary — but it’s a big-budget Spielberg film and the audience knows that Spielberg is not going to let anything awful happen to his primary characters, particularly the children.

The movie is in essence a clone of director Steven Spielberg’s two decade-old sequel, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. One danger after another must be overcome, and there is little development of plot. Character growth occurs along the way and seems largely forced. Spielberg is much more interested with placing his characters in harm’s way and watching them overcome the physical adversity than he is in explaining why Cruise’s children have grown so distant from his father. This is mostly appropriate, but some attention to plot and background would have been useful and such plot development and background as is offered has a strong verisimilitude.

Many gaping holes in the story are unresolved. Why would Cruise have assumed that the aliens would have attacked only New York and not other major cities like, well, Boston? The aliens’ method of invasion is never wholly or even adequately explained, nor are other significant facets of their efforts at planetary conquest. Other scenes, like one taking place at an upscale suburban house after the invasion begins, are spectacular to look at but not credible. The ending was also just a touch too saccharine for my taste, but again, it’s Spielberg, so what did I expect?

So overall, the movie is good eye candy and if that’s what you’re in the mood for, it’s probably worth a matinee price. Otherwise, wait for the DVD.