Reviewers worlds apart on new Cruise flick
Tom Cruise’s new blockbuster, War of the Worlds, has been met with mixed reactions in the United States.
The latest adaptation of HG Wells classic 1898 novel is described as “gritty, intense and supremely accomplished” by Variety magazine, while the Associated Press brands it “disjointed and episodic”.
Publicity surrounding the movie has been dominated by Cruise’s whirlwind romance with new love Katie Holmes, but with its long-awaited release the focus has turned to the screen.
Directed by Steven Spielberg, the epic sci-fi adventure focuses on an alien invasion on Earth and one family’s fight to survive.
The result is a “genuinely unsettling movie experience”, according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
But while the newspaper cannot praise too highly the sheer scale and realism of the invasion, it considers the human aspect to the story “weak” with Spielberg’s heart “clearly not in it”.
“Despite all the action and effects, it’s a sombre affair,” it concludes. “A movie without an ounce of adolescent bravado in its soul.”
The Los Angeles Daily News is inclined to agree, bemoaning its “anti-climatic ending”. War of the Worlds is occasionally dull and will not be ranked among the instant classics, it says.
The LA Times, noting that Spielberg grew up in the 1950s, is better impressed and hails it “one of the best 1950s science fiction films ever”. Spielberg, it says, has done his job better than he may realise by proving how fragile the world really is.
There is no room for such accolades in the San Jose Mercury News. “It’s not the end of the world…you just wish it were by the end of the movie,” the reviewer sighs.
“War of the Worlds is a picture without a thought in its pretty head.”
The film is released on Friday.
