How to Watch "War of the Worlds"

I recently saw Steven Spielberg's new film War of the Worlds. Overall, it was excellent. The visuals were incredible, without a hint that any of the elements were computer generated, though logically many of them had to have been. And I like how tension was maintained by having absolutely no background music during a lot of the more intense scenes. Heck, I can't remember now if there was any background music at all. All in all, it was everything that I had originally hoped Independence Day would be when I first heard of it. (Read my review to find out how bad I thought that film was.)

However, I'd heard that the very end of War of the Worlds is exceptionally lousy, and completely ruins everything that came before. In a War of the Worlds thread on a message board that I read, people were suggesting that one should walk out of the theater before the end. They said that one should walk out during the scene where a crowd of people are walking past a "Welcome to Boston" sign.

My girlfriend saw the movie before I did, but I told her about this piece of advice before she did. She didn't follow it, and thus unfortunately had to endure the ending. But she told me afterwards that, while the ending was awful, walking out at the aforementioned moment would have been too soon. The really bad part isn't until a few minutes after that.

So when she and I went to see it together, we walked out right after the scene where the military shoots down an alien tripod, and the door of the tripod opens, and an alien falls partway out and dies. So I haven't seen what happens after that.

And because of this (or so I hear, anyway), I can truly say that Spielberg's War of the Worlds is an excellent film.