Plot Details: This opinion reveals everything about the movie's plot.

Here is my recipe for ending Hollywood's theatrical earnings slump: Now that he has won his Best Supporting Actor Oscar, Morgan Freeman should probably be required to provide narration for every summer movie. He has lent himself to the no-doubt-higher-quality "March of the Penguins" as well as to Spielberg's latest Cruise vehicle, and many fans will probably go to see both movies on the strength of Freeman's reputation alone. His beginning and ending paragraphs are more true to H. G. Wells' 1898 novel than anything in between, and he even manages to deliver them better than the same lines were delivered in the 1953 War of the Worlds.

"War of the Worlds" opens with Freeman explaining that complacent humanity is about to have its dominion over the earth contested. Then we see Ray Kieffer (Tom Cruise) removing containers from a ship at the Port of Newark (I think). As he gets off work, he steadfastly refuses to add another shift, as a rare weekend with his kids is coming up. Though the weekend will give him the chance to save his kids' lives, he must be thinking when they arrive that at least he is appreciated by his fellow longshoremen. They are sullen, comparing him unfavorably to their stepfather Tim; although 10-year-old Rachel (Dakota Fanning) is less so than 15-year-old Robbie (Justin Chatwin), who tries to provoke his father by calling him by his first name. It's easier for Kieffer to build a bridge to his ex-wife Mary Ann (Miranda Otto), whom he congratulates on her third pregnancy, saying, "That's a good look for you." I have never had an ex-wife, but if I did and she was having another baby this is just the sort of thing I (hope I) would say. So I liked this character, although he may not be the best parent under ordinary conditions, failing to help his son with his homework or even cook dinner for his kids, telling them instead to order out.

Mary Ann and Tim depart for her parents' place in Boston. After an angst-ridden few minutes playing catch with Robbie, Ray goes to bed early on Friday night and sleeps until after 4 P. M. Saturday. (His kids aren't THAT boring -- come on!) Robbie has gotten tired of waiting for his father to interact with him and has decided to get Ray's attention by taking his car. Ray goes into the working-class street on which he lives in search of Robbie, only to find, in a scene obviously taken from "Independence Day," the whole neighborhood staring in the same direction. This time, they are looking not at a 15-mile-wide flying saucer, but at an odd-looking cloud, which we in Oklahoma would suspect of harboring tornadoes but people in New Jersey just don't know what to make of.

Now, Spielberg knows that alien invasion has been done to death recently and that he therefore has to come up with some way to make his "nasty alien invaders" movie stand out from all the rest. M. Night Shyamalan accomplished this brilliantly in Signs by reducing the aliens to a catalyst for the main character's spiritual reawakening. Spielberg's major departure from "War of the Worlds" canon is to have his aliens arrive not by flying saucer but by somewhat portentious (pretentious?) meteorology. And the real kicker is their assault vehicles were already here, buried across the planet hundreds of thousands (more likely millions) of years ago.

More needs to be said about this. I'm not the only reviewer who thinks it odd that the aliens would go to all the trouble of burying hundreds of 200-foot tripods all over the Earth -- and then just walk away from the place. One reviewer brought up Lovecraft -- perhaps the aliens are reclaiming what was theirs first. Did the aliens survive Earth's disease environment by working in full environment suits, sample the then-prevailing microorganisms, and come back only after they had a cure for every disease they knew existed here however many millions of years ago? Does their planet fail to rotate with the rest of the galaxy, hovering just outside it and waiting for the good colonization prospects to come back around once every 2 million centuries? Did they come here solely to try out new weapons systems against what they thought would be easy meat, lest they be disappointed in some larger battle elsewhere?

The only real explanation for the aliens' failure to spread themselves and their odd red flora across the planet on their first visit is that while the aliens may want a planet, the moviegoers want a war. How things have changed since the days of "E. T." when Spielberg was confident he could make money by telling the story of a lost, benevolent alien, dependent on children for his very survival. Even as recently as Minority Report, he was willing to be a little bit subversive, making a seemingly benevolent, elderly public servant the ultimate villain of the piece.

But Spielberg has not surrendered completely to the jingoistic spirit of the times. The military, while more visible than in the 1953 version, is little more effective in fighting the aliens. The climax of the film is Ray and Rachel's capture by the aliens, after they have been separated from Robbie, who seemed utterly determined to get himself killed. This sequence starts out as the most hopeless of the film; Ray emerges from a farmhouse basement where he, Rachel and an unhinged survivor (Tim Robbins, who steals every scene he's in) have been hiding to see the creeping red alien vine choking out Earth's own plant life for as far as the eye can see. It seems not only man, but everything that makes Earth Earth is to be destroyed. Then it becomes the second most triumphant of the film. With only a brace of grenades and an assist from a U. S. Army POW, Ray succeeds in destroying a tripod and liberating himself, Rachel, and a dozen other prisoners, both of which the military has been unable to do up to this point in the movie.

The most triumphant sequence of the film, of course, is when Ray and Rachel finally reach Mary Ann's parents' house. Not only is Mary Ann there waiting for them (in complete contrast to New Jersey and southern New York, where the whole population had to go on the run), but we see her breath against the glass -- INTACT GLASS -- of her front door. The war simply never came to this quiet Boston street. (I suppose at one extreme, it could be that Boston was underwater when the aliens buried their tripods, and that's why it took them 10 days to get there.) She opens it and Rachel runs to her. She mouths "thank you" to Ray. Then, somehow, Robbie bursts from behind her and goes out to embrace his father.

At this point my willing suspension of disbelief collapsed utterly. Earlier, we saw Robbie go "over the top" with some soldiers who were met moments later by a wall of fire that sent burning Humvees careering wildly towards Ray and Rachel. Because he's been so heroic the writer had to reward Ray by snatching his son from the jaws of certain death. Ray had done a remarkable job coming to terms with Robbie's death, and now it turns out he didn't have to. This bit of emotional manipulation was wasted on me; leaving Robbie dead would have been so much more honest, as he was almost too stupid to live. (When Ray tells him the first tripod he saw came from "somewhere else," Robbie asks, "You mean. . .EUROPE?")

Anyway, I have to overall give a negative recommendation. "E. T." -- five stars. "Close Encounters" -- four stars. "War of the Worlds" -- two stars. Thought about giving it three, but ultimately couldn't justify that. Check out bilavideo's review for a list of movies you might rent instead, depending on what you're in the mood for. (Also check it out for his ruminations on the identity of national character and destiny of the U. S. and Israel, which happen to echo my own thoughts.)

Recommended: No

Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age