PhilPaine.com

After about twen­ty min­utes of expe­ri­enc­ing Steven Spielberg’s “typ­i­cal Amer­i­can fam­i­ly”, which con­sists of an incred­i­bly bone-head­ed father, played by Tom Cruise, an annoy­ing, con­stant­ly screech­ing young daugh­ter, and a tire­some­ly surly son, I start­ed to root for the Mar­tians. I des­per­ate­ly hoped that the Mar­tians would turn them into blood slurpees. Actu­al­ly, the film doesn’t say they are Mar­tians; it would be impos­si­ble to log­i­cal­ly update Wells’ 1898 nov­el and have them com­ing from Mars. But wher­ev­er the aliens come from, they seem to have been able to build a tech­no­log­i­cal super-civ­i­liza­tion with­out know­ing the germ the­o­ry of dis­ease. The 1953 Byron Hask­ins adap­ta­tion, star­ring Gene Bar­ry, was a lot more fun.