Bought this at the local Wal-Mart for $7.50 last week. I'm a big fan of H.G. Wells' book and Jeff Wayne's musical plus I wasn't too giddy about the Spielberg/Cruise adaption so I thought I'd check this out. I never heard of Pendragon pictures or even knew another version was being made. So I saw it sitting there on the shelf at a low price and thought I couldn't go wrong there. I figured it'd be a low-budget, made-for-TV movie type of flick with suitable special effects, music, etc. Boy was I wrong! The acting wasn't so bad with the exception of a couple people. The main character has the fakest mustache I've ever seen. Was it so hard to get a professional looking one or for him to grow one? The special effects, let's not go there kids. These effects look like rendered cut scenes from a circa-1995 video game. 2 scenes that come to mind as extremely bad are when a person gets stepped on by a martian tripod and the scene where a woman gets her blood sucked out by aliens. Pathetic. The musical score wasn't so bad but it was so overplayed that halfway through this 3 HOUR movie I was begging for a scene with no soundtrack and wanted to smash the composer's keyboard. Editing is an art lost on this director. You know, some scenes don't need to be as long and we don't need a lot of shots just showing a guy walking around.
All in all, I picked this film up with no expectations or pre-conceived notions and I was really disappointed.
All in all, I picked this film up with no expectations or pre-conceived notions and I was really disappointed.