Movie Review - War of the Worlds (with bonus Cream Soda Crush-related tangent)

I know I'm a bit late to the game in seeing this one, but thought I'd weigh in nonetheless.

I guess the first thing to say is that visually, it is quite a masterpiece. Top-flight special effects all the way, plus a sense of realism that I've never seen before in similar films. You really could imagine an alien invasion happening (if not for all the plot holes), and the effects deserve full credit for this.

But the story? Ehh.... Tom Cruise is clearly trying too hard to act like a weekend father, and it shows. Yes, I understand that he needs to project this image in order to turn into a more caring parent later on, but his performance just doesn't click for me. And I'm not one of these people who bashes Tom Cruise for the hell of it. I thought he did one helluva job in Collateral, for example. A Few Good Men, too, for that matter. But here? Not so much.

The other big problem with the film is that it was just too... unrealistic. Yeah, I do realize that you're not going to have an alien invasion life built on a true-life story. I just would have liked to see some further explanation for a lot of the things that happened. I won't spoil it for anyone, there are just a few burning questions that needed to be answered (or at least addressed), and it just never seemed to happen. You can make a movie like this and still but a little less cartoonish; I'm convinced of it.

So I guess this is one in hindsight I'd probably save for the DVD release, even though its not awful or anything. If you're committed to going to see movie anyways, go see Wedding Crashers - different genre, but definitely worth the price of admission.

Final, completely, unrelated little tangent here: What the HELL is with those contests they have buried under the bottle liners of soda pop bottles? You can never remove them from the bottlecap, unless you pick at it for like 20 minutes using a combination of your fingernails, a fork and various farm implements. Maybe its just me.

Anyways, the bottlecap in question was for Cream Soda Crush, and while I have nothing personally against the Cream Soda Crush Corporation, I seriously think they should be sending me a consolation prize for 20 minutes of effort trying to unearth the bottle liner. That's got to be worth something, no? I figure how that's how they make money with all these contests running all the time; no one bothers to open the damn things, so Cream Soda Crush Corp. doesn't actually have to award anything!