War of the Words

This obvious typo has appeared on numerous marquees this season, and one such example was cited in Steve Harvey's "Only in L.A." column in the Times, a daily compendium of funny regional typos and malapropisms. Dropping the "L" from the Spielberg movie title is appropriate enough, if the "L" stands for literacy. This effort, though as usual, technically superb, lacked anything resembling Logic in its storytelling, and represents Spielberg at his Lesser self.

While I was watching this update of the H.G. Wells/Orson Welles/George Pal warhorse I was thinking to myself, "Wow, this is fun!" Spielberg's skill at creating kinetic cinema and editing for maximal visceral thrills is always something to admire. The sequence that starts the invasion, with the aliens exploding up through the cracks in the pavement while the onlookers gaze dumbly, is masterful, as is the entire set piece involving the ferry boat "escape." But the movie had serious flaws, which emerge only after you're leaving the theater and try to fill some of the plot holes.

Now I'm not asking for Dostoevskian motivations or Charley Kaufmanish clever plot convolutions, just a little sense. I'd like not to have to ask what happened to the subplot involving Tom Cruise's implacable son, or what actually occurred between Tom and Tim Robbins that he didn't want Dakota Fanning to hear. I kind of figured out how Tom's car was the only one to escape New Jersey. Something to do with a solenoid, whatever that is. Then there is H.G. Wells' resolution of the story, which no producer has ever tried to alter, because it seems perfectly plausible. Aliens would probably succumb to the microbes on a distant planet. This is why such intense measures were taken to sterilize anything and anybody who came back from the Moon. But if NASA, which hasn't exactly been clear on faulty o-rings or metric conversion, could be astute enough to understand biological contamination--wouldn't Nearly Omnipotent Aliens planning this invasion for a million years have taken similar precautions? It's like that appalling contradiction in M. Night Shamalyan's "Signs." These awful invaders from Planet Arrakis or whatever decide to colonize Earth even though they are allergic to water. Hello? Wouldn't they have figured out that the Big Blue Marble was a pretty poor candidate for setting up shop? I'd sure fire the Head of their NASA.

Spielberg--whose oeuvre I certainly admire ("Close Encounters" is about my favorite film, and "Schindler's List" is a meteoric achievement), seems to be falling into a Woody Allen sort of rut, repeating his own exercises. The scene in "Worlds" of clackety aliens chasing Tim, Tom and Dakota around the farmhouse recalled very similar choreography of the velociraptors hunting down the kids in the galley of the first "Jurassic Park." And the chases through the streets were redux of similar action in the San Diego section of "Jurassic Park II." However expensive and brilliantly realistic these special effects dynamics are, they tend to blend together in the brain of the observer. Immediate thrills, yes; lasting impressions, not at all. Oh well, I guess that is the meaning of a summer popcorn movie, and any other significance the director may try to imbue in the scenario, such as cautionary urgings about responsible parenthood and civil reaction to terrorism, are pretty specious elements.

Spielberg is now at work finishing post for his winter release, a much more sobering film about the Munich massacre of Israeli athletes and the Israeli revenge. I'm sure it will be compelling (and hopefully stress the latter section, not the still-painful Olympics events). It won't make the box office of "Worlds" but will probably vie for Oscars. It seems that Speilberg has evolved to the point that his work is satisfying only in its most serious mode. When I leave the theater in December after viewing that film, it is a lot less likely that my first words, as they were this week, will be "Where do you want to eat?"