Mel Gibson can't act.
 He can't even act a little bit, and he's been in what, 30 movies?
 If someone stopped me on the street and asked, "Who can't act more, Gibson or Cruise?"
 I'd be stumped, because their inability to act knows no bounds.
 The kids in this movie can act better than Mr Wooden Face,
 and they've only been alive for a handful of years.

 This movie is a big, big mess.
 It's part War of the Worlds, part Honey I Shrunk the Kids, part Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
 The director seems to have no idea at all where he's going or trying to say.  I'm really getting to
 hate his directorial style. There is so much dead air in this movie, if you took out the meaningless
 parts it would've been a half hour shorter. It seems like nothing at all happens in the first hour
 - you just sit there. Plus, whenever Shamalama zooms in for a close-up of somebody besides Gibson,
 you know that means the space monkey is a foot away, and they have to zoom in or everyone
 in the audience could see what the idiots on the screen ought to be able to see.

 To make things worse, about a third of this movie is severe close-ups of Mel's face.
 I don't need to know how many nosehairs Mel has in each nostril. (102 left, 108 right)
 Maybe that Shamalama Ding Dong director is gay, which is fine, but why treat us
 to severe close-ups of a face that has no ability to express emotion?

 The pacing of this movie is slow, plodding, tedious and ponderous.
 When Mel walks up the steps, the camera painfully catches close-ups of each and every step.
 OK! He walked up the damn steps - get on with the damn movie!

 There was so much unnecessary crap in this film, too.  Early in the film, they wanted to establish
 that the family dogs (German Shepherds, of course) could "sense" something weird. Instead of, say,
 having the dogs reject their food, or turn in circles or whatever, Shamalama has Gibson's son run thru
 his beloved dog with a giant barbeque fork to save his little sister from the crazed family pet.
 Did we really need to see that? Why was that scene so important?

 The clumsy religious angle was like The Titanic coming up Fifth Avenue. If you couldn't see it coming,
 this was your very first time in a theater. Anytime a former preacher says "I hate you, God,"
 you know God will throw him a bone because God always answers your prayers, right?

 And then they make the classic sci-fi screw up about the damn rules.
 Flashback to my review of The Sixth Sense, which broke all the same rules.

 Gibson's kid buys a book on aliens, so that becomes The Bible for this movie.
 Anything the kid reads in the "When the aliens come" book MUST be true.
 Those are the rules, you see?   If the kid had purchased a different book, the aliens
 would've had to obey THOSE rules.  I wonder if the damn aliens can even read English?

 Just like my review of The Panic Room, it got so tedious and ponderous,  I was rooting for
 the damn aliens to just break thru and eat everybody.  Like with Panic Room, every time they
 have a chance to do it right, they screw it up. Commodus hit the alien with a baseball bat
 (Don't ask - it's too stupid to explain) and the alien reacts about like you or I would - he's badly hurt,
 and stands there, too stunned to move. So does Commodus hit him again and again and again?
 Noooooooooo, that would make sense!
 You can't make sense and be in a movie directed by Shamalama.
 Commodus stands there and waits for the alien slowly recover - he doesn't want to live.
 He wants to be eaten.
 Maybe he was a liberal dove and thought hitting the alien repeatedly "wouldn't be fair."

 Then they figure out the alien hates water like The Devil in The Exorcist hates Holy Water.
 There are dozens of glasses of water all around the living room (Don't ask - again!) so do they
 each grab a glass and poor it on the wounded alien?
 Nooooooooooo, that would make sense!  - and we can't have characters making sense.

 Another thing - Gibson is such a severe right-wing loon, why doesn't he own a shotgun?
 He's fighting these aliens with baseball bats and glasses of tap water, but I'll bet that alien
 wouldn't be much trouble after having a 12-gauge enema applied to his ass.

 It keeps getting worse

 Just like Panic Room, Gibson owns a cell phone.
 Does he use it when the alien is clawing at his door?
 Does he call for an ambulance when his son stops breathing?
 Nooooooooooo, that would make sense!
 I guess he only uses the cell when a child he loves is dying.

 I hate it when a movie is held together only by the idiocy of the "heroes."  And just like Panic Room,
 the kid has asthma, and, of course, his inhaler is conveniently left on the other side of the door,
 where the alien is waiting for them. Trust me, if I couldn't live without my inhaler, there are no
 aliens scary enough to make me forget to keep my lil' breathing helper with me at all times.

 You can tell there's a good movie hidden deep - real deep in this film, but as hard as it tries to
 escape the no-talent acting, the illogical script and the tedious and ponderous directing, it can't.
 I'm glad I left my bullshit detector at home. I would've been thrown out for sure when it started
 barking like a injured chihuahua drunk on Cuervo Gold. Thee only positive thing I can say
 about this film is it has lots and lots of corn. They do a looooooooot of running thru corn fields,
 and I kept expecting to hear shouts of, "Mulder! and "Scully!"

 I saw a glowing review that said "Shamalama isn't afraid of long scenes with lots of talk."
 That's true - he's afraid to get to the damn point or to make sense.

 Same reviewer: "His unsettling movies hang around in your head long after they're over."
 This is true - the movie's been over for hours and I'm still pissed off.

 I don't understand why Shamalama is such a heralded director.
 Take away the cheating he did in Sixth Sense, and you've got nothing, but every A-list actor
 in Hollywood will work for free just to get close to this "genius."

 Don't waste your money on this dog - it'll just end up peeing on your leg.
 Wait until it's on HBO so you can laugh and howl at the right times.

 Last thing - I think this would be a horrible date movie.
 We were both in a bad mood on the way home - it does that to you.
 You single guys won't be getting anything after this movie, except maybe a headache.

 Have you seen this dog movie?
 If you did, I'd sure like to read your review.
 And if you think Mel Gibson can act, I'd really like to hear from you.