Usually she's upbeat about most movies, but even she said it was a bad movie. Bad plot, bad dialog, bad acting, etc. It's a movie that never gets where it should be going, starts with people running scared, and never gets beyond that. No heroics, that would be a bad thing in their mind.
One guy (out of all the people in the movie) wants to fight back against the evil Martians aith a gun, and they portray him as a madman and Cruise ends up killing the sap. Cruise's son wants to join up with some soldiers to fight back, and Cruise is desperately trying to convince him that's wrong.
Hollyweird is wondering why people aren't bothering with going to the movies. But they're not listening to true Americans who are fed up with their crappy subliminal messages (and bad movies).
Have you read the novel? There are no heroics in 'War of the Worlds'! This movie was quite faithful to the tone and spirit of the Wells text.