War of the Worlds review

The War of The World

By Oggy Bleacher

The only surprise here is that the Dakota Fanning hype is true. This picture perfect little actress can act better than five hundred Mary-Kate-and-Ashleys put together. In a movie filled with clichés that is saying something. At one point, Fanning is waiting in the middle of a battlefield for her father to return with her older brother. A Good Samaritan couple comes by and decides they should save the girl. “I’m waiting for my father,” says Fanning. Coming from any other person, this line would have collapsed to the ground under its own uselessness. But Fanning delivers the line filled with what appears to be restrained hysteria. Like she has lost her mind, and her father, and can’t accept it. The Good Samaritan couple is convinced she’s an orphan in denial. They try to rescue her anyway. Fanning saves countless other scenes in similar fashion and is the real hero of the movie.

Meanwhile, Tom Cruise doesn’t know if he is in Mission Impossible III or Minority Report II. You have to admire Cruise for not saturating the market with his chin. He picks one action movie a year to waste his talents on and spends the other months courting actresses twenty years his junior. He is an old-school Hollywood celebrity and he is impossible to dislike, which is more than can be said for Steven Spielberg’s sci-fi monstrosity.

War of the Worlds has the benefit of human, rather than CGI, extras. This helps make the boring scenes palatable. But the real-life disasters of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita should dispel any illusions that Americans will be able to rescue even themselves when the deal goes down with Aliens from another galaxy who farm humans for their fluids. Instead of a combined effort to defeat the Aliens, expect nuclear missiles flying indiscriminately around the world causing more destruction than they prevent, total breakdown of emergency services, lack of communication between authorities, and more looting than a Pirate at Mardi Gras. The failure to respond will be everyone’s fault but the President’s.

The original War of the Worlds was scary because Orson Wells maintains an element of illusion. It takes more than Dakota Fanning to keep the illusion intact in a movie staring Tom Cruise, whose big teeth are on every gossip rag in the country when you go to buy milk. But if there is any illusion remaining for you, don’t worry; Morgan Freeman’s utterly uncalled-for narrative will destroy it as you wonder if you are watching Shawshank Redemption, March of the Penguins, or Million Dollar Baby.

Grade: C