JJ Abrams "Cloverfield" -- A String of Tired Movie Cliches Looking For A Place To Land

Am I the only one who was deeply unimpressed with this movie? The commercials for JJ Abrams latest movie "Cloverfield" set my expectations on high. I was expecting a brilliant movie, but ended up with a handful of recycled movie clichés that didn't really amount to anything. Let's review all the traditional clichés "Cloverfield" managed to cram into 2 hrs. First we have the cast: all genetically perfect twentysomethings who have great jobs and cool names. No one is fat, bald or unattractive in anyway. God forbid the leads all be Hispanic. Or black. Or ugly! Sigh. Second we have the location: New York. This is actually notable because it marks the 500th consecutive time a giant monster attacks New York and nowhere else on earth. Third we have a classic icon being destroy, the Statue of Liberty. Fourth we have a hero who is racing back into the action not because seeing a giant monster would make anyone extremely curious, but because his one true love (the genetically perfect girl whose name and character I can't even recall now) is trapped in her apartment! Sigh. Again? Really? In the age of Jackass-style tv shows why do we need such an obvious and contrived plot twist to convince our heroes to go back into the city where the monster is? Why not just follow a couple of kids who go back into the city to specifically see the monster and then get more than they bargained for? Seems like lazy writing to me to pull that old cliché out. Wait. Lazy writing? Did someone say goofy best friend who manages to get off a couple of good one-liners? Bingo! Enter Hud (short for Hudson, because no one in the real world has a boring name like "Steve" or "Virgil") This movie was just a string of clichés from other movies. Did you like shaky handheld camera "You Are There!" effect of the Blair Witch Project? Did you like "Independence Day" with Will Smith and "Armageddon" with Bruce Willis? Then don't bother watching "Cloverfield" because you've already seen it. The whole thing just didn't go anywhere. Yes, there were flashes of brilliant dialogue, but that just made it even more annoying that it went from brilliant ("Wait...have you heard of Garfield too?") to teethgrindingly clichéd in the matter of moments. None of the characters seemed all that interested in the monster or the situation they were in (as evidenced by Hud focusing the camera solely on his friends jumping across a rooftop instead of watching the 50 story demon knocking down buildings right in front of him. Right...in...front...of...him!) It was supposed to be "real" yet nothing seemed very real -- especially the unbelievably rapid response of the military on the scene. And that field hospital they set up in the mall within a matter of hours? When I think "real" I think more FEMA and Hurrican Katrina than anything else. And the monster could be hit with bombs nonstop and not show any sign of injury? Huh? And Central Park is nuked in Operation: Hammerdown but the video tape and camera are all intact? It just didn't seem to really go anywhere or amount to anything. Monster attacks New York and the heros died. The end. That's it? Nothing terribly clever or original in the plot, the charcters, the monster(s) or the ending. Is it just me?