Occupations Always Fail

Rating: 9/10 (4 July 2005)

My whole family loved this movie.
The effects are as cool as you'd expect. In particular, the bone-shaking noises the machines communicate with are highly unsettling.
The plot follows the H.G. Wells novel somewhat closer than the 1950s movie, for what that's worth. The tripod war machines are the most noticeable example. There is at least one touch you won't appreciate at all unless you've read the novel: the aliens' interest in a bicycle wheel in one scene is a nod to Wells' improbable conceit that the Martians (for that's who they were in the novel and the George Pal movie) had never invented the wheel! - their machines ran on a complicated system of sliding arms and cables.
Dakota Fanning, who plays the little kid with her emotional problems and trendy coping devices ("This is your space. You are safe inside it.") is the best thing in the movie, by far. She gives a professional, nuanced, performance. But Tim Robbins delivers the best line in the movie: "Occupations always fail."
What with all the ghastly bad publicity about him lately, it's a little tricky at the beginning seeing Tom Cruise and not thinking, "That's Tom Cruise. He's insane." But you get used to it after a bit.