The Reel Rejects - WAR OF THE WORLDS (2025) IS HILARIOUSLY AWFUL!! MOVIE REVIEW!

Starting point is 00:00:00 Searchlight Pictures presents The Roses, only in theaters August 29th. From the director of Meet the Parents and the writer of Poor Things comes The Roses, starring Academy Award winner Olivia Coleman, Academy Award nominee Benedict Cumberbatch, Andy Samburg, Kate McKinnon, and Alison Janney. A hilarious new comedy filled with drama, excitement, and a little bit of hatred, proving that marriage isn't always a bed of roses. See The Roses only in theaters, August 29th. Yes, Amazon! Go Amazon!

Starting point is 00:00:33 Amazon is the real hero. Bezos! Bezos! Bezos! John, are you ready to find out why everyone is saying this is just the worst? I am so excited. I could not be more excited. I'm ready. I hope this is fun bad and not boring bad. Let's find out. All right, ladies and gentlemen, I want to think prep or fray now on these highlights. John, fun fact, when we started this movie, it was number three in the U.S. Uh-huh.

Starting point is 00:01:05 By the time it is over, it is number four. No! In an hour. It's got to be number one. In an hour and a half, it has dropped from number three to number four. No. I've never seen that happen when we're playing filming something. That is so funny.

Starting point is 00:01:22 Well, it's because we've been here for days. We've been here for days, just like how Icekew was there for days. Yeah. All right. Well, well, well, that wasn't as terrible as people made it out to be, and it's not worthy of being a war of the world. I wonder how much less worse if a feedback would have been if it was not called War of the Worlds. Yeah. If it wasn't like a remake, but just a rip-off of War of the Worlds and in context of aliens, because it's different enough.

Starting point is 00:01:59 it's not really war of the worlds it's not like they fucking you know we're on earth and they got sick from like water um you know the germs it's the germs or whatever like it could have been its own thing but i think like they took the name war of the worlds and and this was originally supposed to be a theatrical release i think and uh they had a cheap way of adapting it in a cool context but this actually could have been a a good movie i think like the ingredients were all there yeah um it was kind of like intermittently entertainingly bad to i was like neutral feeling to entertaining bad um and then by the last 25 minutes i thought really saved this experience yeah it was super entertaining really really went off the rails once it went satisfied full amazon promo mode i was like this is the best thing in the world right now yeah man people's amazon carts it's important i mean um how do you feel what did you think it was like terrible is it the worst thing you've ever seen. What the hell?

Starting point is 00:03:02 What are you feeling right now? This is very interesting because, yes, this was very enjoyable and it isn't succeeding at what it wants to be. That said, I've rarely seen one of these movies that's like pretty well made in certain respects. It's like if you had the performances on a better pitch that sold the circumstances a bit more. The style of the movie and the way it is assembled is actually

Starting point is 00:03:32 pretty conscientious. And yeah, you have all your CG effects kind of mired in these digital fractals and things like that to help hide the fact that you're probably not working with the biggest CG budget. No, no. And it was weird. Like the supporting cat, like

Starting point is 00:03:48 it sucks for Ice Cube because he has to carry the thing and it doesn't feel like, yeah, his wow. It has a zero percent. On Rodin to He's got to carry the movie 19 minutes Oh my God

Starting point is 00:04:03 Anyway yeah Please continue Yeah he's got to carry the movie And it doesn't feel like he's being given The right level of direction But he's still fun to watch And the supporting cast is intermittently Either doing a pretty good job

Starting point is 00:04:17 Or at least is still fun to watch And so yeah Like it's not a completely incompetent mess of a movie Like the sounds fine The whole you know screen life motif is well executed for the most part. I've seen a couple of those kinds of movies and I thought this didn't

Starting point is 00:04:33 wreck that format or anything. But yeah, it has like just the right amount of things off about it to make it wacky. It's so strange because yeah, like usually a so bad it's good movie is like incompetent in some way and this was just like I don't think

Starting point is 00:04:50 because I believe this was a pandemic production it really feels like nobody was in the same room together and I think that's what ultimately undoes the efficacy of what they're attempting here. Yeah. Why would you take it? The motivation is...

Starting point is 00:05:11 Well, it's weirdly... The motivation of the aliens is really weird. The idea of, like, collecting data. Sure, and just, like, eating it all. They're here for data. They're, like, consuming it. I'm like, could you just copy it over? Yeah, that is a strange...

Starting point is 00:05:31 You could just copy data forever. Like, why and what and, huh? Data is kind of everything, and how do they quantify? What is data? If they're out here for data, how come all these, like, feeds and social media and Wi-Fi and Internet and all this thing is actively working throughout the entire film? Things that are constantly streaming data. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:05:56 Yeah, and receive it. Data is always in motion and, like, what is the data that they are, like, actually after the whole time? Government data. It's just random government data, but what will they do with the government data? They just eat it. They just eat it and then fucking leave? I guess. I'm like, yeah, do they need the information for something? Or do they just go from planet to planet trying to eat data?

Starting point is 00:06:20 Yeah, this whole family. It's almost interesting. this whole family is super easy barely an inconvenience that's kind of like the entire family I would say yeah

Starting point is 00:06:31 you know like there's like they don't even try to make like a sense of you know weird sense of destiny behind how the dad is the most important thing the daughter's creation and discoveries

Starting point is 00:06:44 are the most important thing the son's government hacking is the most important thing and then the best Amazon driver in the world is the most important like there there's not even in a sense of like awareness of spiritual destiny to this thing yeah that's sort of like oh my god we

Starting point is 00:07:01 yeah was this a divine providence that somehow we pulled this off yeah um the the the like ice cube's performance is a fucking hysterical here like it it it felt like it was shot in one hour and it never really quite it just seems like he was playing notes he was told to say with some obvious re-recorded dialogue and voiceover shit and there's like a weird sense of apathy to forcing a line reading but never feeling it internally truly yeah it was awkward as shit and there were a bunch of times where it literally sounded like he was just like because they were cut away from him too and his delivery would go like there are times when his delivery is urgent in a way where yeah you can at least tell he's trying to put some oomph into it there are other

Starting point is 00:07:50 times where it's like he's just reading the script. Yeah, yeah. For a movie with Amazon Universal behind it, it looked surprisingly super cheap too. Yeah, it's weird. It's like I admire some of the things they did to not make it look

Starting point is 00:08:08 as cheap as it was, but at the same time it does look like that kind of, like yeah, if this didn't have name actors in it, you might pick it up and go like, oh, you know, I'd be interested to see what these guys do next, you know? But as it stands, yeah, you're like, what is the excuse for the way that this turned out, aside from, again, global pandemic? A lot of predictable plot points.

Starting point is 00:08:30 Yeah, man, there's got to be family, you know? Yeah, it's very predictable. The theme was very well tied in. He's got his dysfunctional family, but then each of their skills, they're like the aliens, because the aliens are, they're tech, but they're also organic. And the solution, they need tech, but they also need the organic. the second they introduced the thing with the daughter like okay that's going to be the thing that kills them right like right away that's going to kill them um when the sun starts giving the data information i was like immediately it's like oh he's the guy you know but on just a film level too like there's no

Starting point is 00:09:09 there's no suspense there's no tension it's just it's just chaos and noise yeah with interlea of family drama that they're doing to try to make it feel like more personal like take a page out of the Tom Cruise one of the of a dad who's not really good at being a dad and now let's do it here but in this microcosm

Starting point is 00:09:31 it's trying to be an inspiration of both of these movies of like OG War of the Worlds Tom Cruise War of the Worlds and then how do we modernize it but when you modernize it you're sacrificing when you modernize it like this and then the way you let it play out it just

Starting point is 00:09:47 raises a bunch of eyebrows and question marks like well this wouldn't work that wouldn't work that wouldn't be possible this wouldn't be online this wouldn't be active like literally within the first hour of this invasion and what they're doing all of this would be offline they wouldn't be able to contact each other or anything feels very selective in the way that they wipe out all of our resources like no awareness when they go into like we're going full dark and blackout mode i'm like but you're reporting the news right yeah you still have a global broadcasts happening or at least a nationwide broadcast happening yeah it's it is very like a parody movie with that's the thing in the last 20 minutes i think they're just like fuck it and then and then it felt like

Starting point is 00:10:27 slightly self-aware yeah but man this movie is this kind of like dour chaotic mess you know what it makes me wonder is if they had acquired the movie and then gone back and shot a new third act or something like that to be like okay like amazon had them do it yeah yeah do like do like like what a lot of low budget found footage like paranormal activities like they bought it and then they shot a new ending to make it like you know Hollywood punch yeah and while i could see this movie easily you know wanting to go for the same finale i could also easily see it being that way around where it's like universal and amazon are picking this up so yeah let's reshoot the end make more fun make it more crazy reject nation i have officially lost over 45 pounds this year

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Starting point is 00:13:12 this seems like a movie that was behind like billionaires wanting to advertise it or shit like the right down to the Tesla plugs and how great Tesla is

Starting point is 00:13:19 and the AirPods and the Amazon well yeah all the braids teams and Zoom and friggin yeah and uh but yeah there's like no

Starting point is 00:13:29 there's there like it doesn't breathe well and like you knew something was off the second they just cut to us breathless movie and not it's not like

Starting point is 00:13:38 a chaotic movie in a complimentary way it's just like chaos to be chaos with no sense of like any drama. Whenever there's like a sense of drama or loss it immediately gets resolved like every single time

Starting point is 00:13:52 you know. It's like trying to take a ride like Pirates of the Caribbean and going like we need to make this more thrilling. Just like crank the speed up. Yeah. Just run the cars through as fast as possible. And yeah there's the thing that I kept complaining about was the lack of sense of time that I felt it had

Starting point is 00:14:08 with like how it felt with ice cube in the room and it didn't feel like there was passage of time and ice cubes time but like there's all this global shit happening over the course of what six hours yeah like it's not even that much time is passing and he doesn't even look

Starting point is 00:14:23 he looks like he doesn't look more exhausted or deflated sweaty or yeah he's just like it looks like he just shot all those scenes in one hour he looks like he's got AC in there yeah it's weird it too it feels like they they flashed you know inspired by war of the world by

Starting point is 00:14:39 each ULs up at the end and and part me feels like this is this felt like the movie you get when someone has only seen the tom cruise version as the frame of reference and then it's like i could remake that but cooler for the modern times yeah like it's i you know it's it shares enough connective tissue to all of the war of the worlds but at the same time i partly do wonder if this had been something else because there's a gap in the release this was shot in like 2020 and then they released in 2025 so another part of my brain goes was this called something different not intended to be war of the worlds and then they were like you know what

Starting point is 00:15:13 we could acquire this we universal slash i don't know it seems like amazon's involved majorly somehow we could acquire this repackage it as war of the worlds and probably actually make some kind of profit on this or make something back on the investment or whatever like it it's enough war of the

Starting point is 00:15:29 worlds that i can see it being intentionally conceived that way but it's also generic enough that it could just be anything the top review on amazon so i have thought too like it does feel like a student film I just love that the one review says This could have been an email

Starting point is 00:15:43 Yeah Yeah it does Well if this was a student film I would be way more impressed I guess Let's see here Wow okay This was this was fascinating

Starting point is 00:15:55 Yeah and I don't feel like They really understood the screen style Of what makes that like The movies like searching and missing I haven't seen search of them missing I thought was an incredible experience And that knows how to do the emotional beats and somehow make it believable of what you're experiencing.

Starting point is 00:16:16 But this was just, like, ridiculous. It was just a kinetic, frenetic film without any real meat to the story. That's what I mean. It was like a lot of neutrality to entertain. I was never quite bored. Tom Cruise, is this a real fact? Tom Cruise was scheduled to do a walkthrough in a background scene. That can't be real. Really?

Starting point is 00:16:44 I don't buy that, but they did apparently use the Crash 747 airliner's site at Universal. Oh, hell yeah. Oh, my God. Okay, so first mentioned in 2020 as an untitled Beck Mamm Batav feature starting Ice Cube for Universal. So, yeah, I think you're probably right, that it wasn't originally a War of the World's movie. And they probably, yeah, they probably got the president thing to be like, this is a war of the worlds and just, yeah,

Starting point is 00:17:10 like taped it on there because it's like, yeah, it's a close enough. Yeah. And it's weird because like there's the stuff in this, I think this movie is a perfect storm of like the generic shit they try to do is like,

Starting point is 00:17:20 for me, was like charming enough that I was never off put or bored, but it is like super generic and also makes you wonder like if Ice Cube is so committed to his job and, you know, looking out for national security,

Starting point is 00:17:37 you know, He's also spying on his family and using tons and tons and tons of resources to do so and like, you know, clearly breaking the law. And then you look at this movie and you're like, this is bankrolled by major corporations who do harvest information. And the movie has this message about like data security and not giving your shit up to the powers the be. It's so fun. It rings that same bell you get when you're like, oh, yeah, major corporation makes a movie about a dad who's spent too much time at work. It's incredibly tone deaf film. and it's messaging

Starting point is 00:18:08 and in some ways it's a champion for being like if Ice Cube didn't have this job we'd be dead so Ice Cube's invasion of privacy is actually really helpful

Starting point is 00:18:17 and then that thing at the end where the guy comes in he's like we want you to make a new version of surveillance that doesn't harvest people's personal data and he just ignores that

Starting point is 00:18:26 like I get that he wants to go off and you know be a whistleblower with his son that's cool the fact that he shuts down that idea and he's like I'm not looking in anybody's Amazon carts

Starting point is 00:18:33 anymore and I'm like I thought what the guy just said was that we're not going to do that. They're not going to do that. Yeah. Like, who's paying attention to the script on this?

Starting point is 00:18:41 Who's the script supervisor? Oh, yeah, that's the other thing, too. Dialogue was awful. The dialogue was so bad. Yeah. A lot of stiff shit. This is a, oh, unfriended movies. Those are good, too.

Starting point is 00:18:54 Those are really good screen. Yeah, those are good screen life movies. I want to see searching. I've never seen it. Yeah. Is he missing? No. Or missing.

Starting point is 00:19:04 Yeah. Whichever one's the John show. is the first one yeah storm re one is a great i thought that was amazing um but yeah this is uh yeah this is sad for i just feel sad weirdly the thing i feel is like sad for ice cube this this relies on him and this should this could a bit like the way it i imagine is for john show but the way how it's her storm read where she gives a tour to first performance yeah uh this should have been like ice cubes tour to force performance well yeah and like it would be it's weird his offness

Starting point is 00:19:38 helps make the movie enjoyable but it does like I'm curious if he's going to ever comment on this or I'm sure someone was something to ask him at some point because I don't know yeah this could be the situation

Starting point is 00:19:49 where like yeah the movie's not great but like Ice Q really carried it and I feel like he he's still amusing the whole time which is good and helps the movie but it's yeah it's just not the calling card that you want it's not a feather in his cap unfortunately not

Starting point is 00:20:03 unfortunately and I think the saving grace i think it is that thing that you fear as a filmmaker where you're like well at least i'm bringing entertainment to a lot of people even if it's not how i intended to hey man it's somehow this straight to streaming movie there's a lot of terrible straight to streaming movies there's so many for some reason this became the talk yeah um because it's called war of the worlds yeah well because it came out of nowhere too it's like i feel like everyone has been ambushed by this movie by surprise you know yeah fucking insane like i part of yeah i'm like was there a way to to just scoot this out and have nobody noticed i have no idea but man

Starting point is 00:20:53 i'm glad we watched it i had a fun time very fun what did you guys think of war the worlds you know um yeah i i don't i'm not opposed to the concept at all but like in reality, if this is what the alien's mission is, I'm like, well, this movie shouldn't exist because it would all be fucking down. They would have consumed the movie. They would have consumed. Like, it just makes those, like the whole movie just makes

Starting point is 00:21:17 zero sets the entire time. This is so different than like a found footage movie. Like, how is this camera still operating? Why are they still recording? You get past that shit. This movie also suffers from that. They also do that thing terribly, but

Starting point is 00:21:33 then they have this other thing. We're like, This concept just, like, doesn't work. It doesn't work because of what's happening. Like, you can't, it makes no sense. So, yeah. It is, uh, poorly written, poorly acted. And, uh, the daughter's pretty good, though. Daughter's pretty good.

Starting point is 00:21:50 Daughter's, daughter, daughter really gives her all. I, I didn't mind the performance of Amazon driver either. I thought he was fun. Dave Longoria was fine in some scenes. Yeah, yeah. Clark Greg did his Clark Greg thing. Um, and, and sometimes the effects, I, you know, like as cheap as it looked, um, they're at times when they went all fuzzy

Starting point is 00:22:06 it kind of looked a little bit like actually they actually look better when you know when people do like AI video prompts now that are fucking go viral those look better than this sure by a lot actually they could have made something really eerie don't worry they will be using

Starting point is 00:22:23 AI to make this movie pretty soon yeah probably right yeah stopping it what would you guys think leave your thoughts down below and talk with you guys soon Thank you.

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The Reel Rejects - WAR OF THE WORLDS (2025) IS HILARIOUSLY AWFUL!! MOVIE REVIEW!

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