Irritating!

Rating: 5/10 (17 February 2015)

I am a great lover of sci-fi movies and remember watching the original as a child, so what of this modern revisit? Well my thoughts back in 2005 (and 10 years later having watched it again a few evening ago) remain the same - the children of Mr Cruise are irritating to the point of killing the movie, yes folks, the girl is on a scream-fest at every opportunity (and then some), whilst the son is just plain argumentative and unpredictable to the point of being nonsensical. Cruise is still maturing in this movie (I really enjoyed his later sci-fi movie outings: Oblivion & Edge of tomorrow) and still using some of his old thespian techniques such as body language, that 'swagger', light bouncy movements that feel like he is going through the motions of a rehearsal - in fact that term kind of hits the mail on the head - many scenes looked like rehearsal shots rather than what you would expect in the finished product. Throw in Tim Robbins escapades and the whole thing becomes quite jarring. Not a catastrophe - but this really feels like the director lost control of the characters behaviour and the script would have needed work to iron those issues out.