Rating of
2.5/4
Anti-magnetic
gzn - wrote on 03/18/12
I love sci-fi, haven't seen a Spielberg film I didn't enjoy, loved other Abrams productions (apart from the ending of Lost, because of which I still occasionally seethe), but this was just so-so. I found it slow, it seemed to fall somewhere between a teen and an adult film, and what some deem nostalgia felt like cliche to me. It seemed like film making by numbers - gather an assortment of goofs, add a pretty girl (in films, heroines cannot be goofs, heroes can), chuck in some personal grief, a load of public servants gone bad, add a family member who cannot show the love they feel because they have been hurt so deeply, and of course complete the assemblage with the alien (always seen as clearly as a blurred blurry thing in the darkest of semi-darknesses - until of course it looks deep into the eyes of the GoofyOne, and tilts its head in that cute canine way that tries to stop you thinking that human-eating aliens with drooling nose-mouth-orifice combos probably have gag inducing breath), who just popped by to see what was going down, but was captured and caged, and so horribly treated that (like me when I have to sit next to anyone with an 'absorbing hobby' at a dinner party), all they want to do is get home ASAP. We all knew from the beginning, just how it would end. Spielberg does do excellent spaceships - even ones made from alien Lego - but it wasn't worth the wait.
