Disjointed Digression

As one of the reviews on Rottentomatoes.com said
“You could do a whole lot worse if you’re looking through generic science fiction or disaster movies, but Steven Spielberg’s standards are usually much higher than this.”
– Brian Webster, APOLLO GUIDE

I agree War of the Worlds is a good sci-fi, FX laden summer blockbuster, but it falls short of what I’ve come to expect from Spielberg. Of course you have to take into account that the movie tried to stay true to the novel that was written in 1898. It even went so far as to include the intro from the novel in the beginning of the film. Of course the movie updated the story to the 21st century, and did it fairly well. I don’t remember the novel very well, but I’m fairly sure that the movie was close to it. As close as an updated story can be I guess. The bad thing is that what I remember about the novel is that when I finished reading it I thought “Oh, that’s it then? That was…not so good.” When I left the movie I felt the same way. The acting was… moderately ok. But then people are not going to see this movie expecting to see an oscar worthy performance from actors, people will expect to see special effects that are oscar worthy. In this sense, the movie does not disappoint. The special effects made the movie for me. I really enjoyed it the explosions, the Tripods, the aliens, the battles. I wanted to like it more than I did, but as the Rolling Stones say “You can’t always get what you want…” If you are up for a summer blockbuster that will require you not only to suspend you disbelief but to leave your disbelief at home then catch War of the Worlds. One of the good things is that I saw this movie as a matinee, which I recommend if you are to go see it. The other good thing was that I got to see a trailer for King Kong! I didn’t know that Jack Black was going to be in this movie, or that there is a scene (in the trailer) that is almost right out of a Liberty Meadows comic!

This entry was posted on Monday, July 11th, 2005 at 2:29 am and is filed under Movie Review. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.