Ice Cube's War Of The Worlds scores rare 0 percent Rotten Tomatoes score
Critics have found a great many reasons not to like Ice Cube's "aliens are here to eat our data" movie, from bland performances to rampant Amazon product placement.
Entering a rarefied strata previously occupied only by films like Gotti, Problem Child, and Police Academy 4: Citizens On Patrol, Ice Cube’s new sci-fi movie/Amazon commercial War Of The Worlds has achieved that rarest of things: Consensus. Specifically, the bad kind, as the new “screenlife” film has just achieved a rare 0 percent fresh rating on film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.
Now, admittedly, the new movie—directed by music video guy Rich Lee, and starring an extremely sleepy-seeming Ice Cube as a Homeland Security officer who tries to stop an alien invasion from the comfort of his laptop—is only rolling with 20 reviews tallied at this point. (That puts it well below other “0 percent” luminaries like Adam Sandler’s The Ridiculous 6—36 reviews—or the all-time record holder, Ballistic: Ecks Vs. Sever, which brought together an incredible 118 critics in a shared chorus of hate back in 2002.) But it does seem like War has potential to grow, especially as social media has been having a field day mocking the film lately, partially for how much of it seems to be occupied by Ice Cube looking quizzically into a webcam, and most especially for its brand integration with producer Amazon: It took artistic bravery, we’d argue, to have the fate of the world hinge on an Amazon drone delivery (complete with showing Cube’s character type the retail juggernaut’s name into his search bar), and then extra-special super bravery to have the characters bribe a houseless guy to risk his life to help them with a $1,000 Amazon gift card.
Interestingly, just about every review surveyed by RT acknowledges that the film could, hypothetically be good, were it not burdened by lousy acting, a largely incoherent script, and the looming feeling of Jeff Bezos breathing down its neck. There have, after all, been several very good movies that have used the “screenlife” concept for both thrills and alternative storytelling; this just isn’t one of them—and you very much don’t have to take our word for it.
