Wrong. The Impossible is a story of a family, first and foremost. If you watch this movie because you want to see amazing scenes of the tsunami hitting the beach, well, you will get some of that but you will also be missing the point. This is a movie that goes small almost every time you would expect it to go big. I'm reminded of a scene midway through the movie. A young boy is sitting around a makeshift fire with other displaced survivors, including a very old woman. They talk together about what has happened and their missing family members, among other things, and at one point, referring to the stars whose light he can still see shining, the boy says, quietly, "They're all dead, aren't they?" In 99 out of a 100 other movies, you would expect the music to swell and the woman to lose her composure and start sobbing and the movie would make it totally obvious that oh my gosh, how TRAGIC, that boy is talking about his family and not even the stars!!!
Instead, The Impossible does...none of those things. Thinking back on that scene, I'm not sure the boy was talking about his family. But the movie leaves that open for you to think about and decide. There are plenty of other scenes like this - they go small when you think they'll go big - but I don't want to ruin anything by describing them.
The movie's subtlety is helped along immensely by the fantastic acting on the part of everyone. Naomi Watts is ostensibly the star of the movie, but I thought the actor who played her oldest son really stole the show. And the younger brothers are amazing, too!
However, this movie is rated PG-13 for a reason. The version I saw on the plane was pretty smooth, and I figured that not much had been cut out. When I watched the unedited version with Jeremy, though, I realized that there were a few graphic (though not gratuitous) moments that had been removed from the airplane edit. I am making sure to mention this because I recommended this movie to my SIL before I saw the full version and I may have told her that there was nothing very scary in it. That is, uh, not true of the unedited version, mmmkay? Just so you know.
Still, this is one of the most uplifting and life-affirming movies I've watched in a long time. I highly recommend it.