War of the Worlds

I completely forgot to mention that we went to see War of the Worlds on Saturday!

Which perhaps gives you a clue as to my thoughts on that movie...

The first half was good. Not great, because there were too many distracting illogicalities to be able to fully focus on the story, but still very good. The acting was good, and my favorite aspect was how convincing the human reactions to such a situation were--rioting crowds, the disbelief, what people in desperate circumstances might come to. I really, really liked this.

But shortly after a dramatic EMP blast supposedly leaves nothing electronic working, people are using digital cameras, camcorders, and somehow simply replacing one part in a mini-van enables the rest of the computer circuitry in it to work. (This, even though Tom Cruise had a perfectly nice, beautiful vintage Mustang down the block that could have worked with only minimal part replacements.)

(slight spoiler about alien appearance)
Also, I thought the spaceships were nicely done and a nice retro-alien look, but the aliens themselves looked like friendlier versions of the ID4 aliens. I found myself sympathizing with them; out of their ship, they didn't seem so bloodthirsty. (Which brings up a whole "What?" issue about the red branching stuff, but I won't get into that.)

Then enter crazy Tim Robbins and the extra-lengthy pointless segment in his basement. It's long, tedious, and needless, leaving me wanting to shout at them, "helloooo, why aren't you running anymore?"

The end was abrupt, if mostly true to the book, and there were a number of vaguely unsatisfying aspects to that ending.

In Brief:
acting: good
effects: great
ending: unsatisfactory
story: strong first half, slow second half

A decent summer movie, but I'm glad I didn't spend $8.50 on it at the nice theater.