Excellent Remake Of A 50's Classic

Rating: 8/10 (5 April 2006)

With the glut of remakes currently being released nowadays, I was somewhat sceptical of seeing this new version of a film which I have loved since my early childhood. I remember also very well Jeff Wayne's Musical version and loved that as well and didn't want anything to spoil my fond memories.
I was very surprised by this film in the fact that, in a lot of ways it did stick to the original version (especially from half way through) but it also offered some great differences as well. There were also elements in the film that were apparent in the Musical version but not in the original film. All in all it was a lovely mixture of the old, new and the musical (I never read the book.) Now, most remakes I have seen I have despised, but this is the one exception. It is absolutely outstanding in many, many ways. Firstly there is the special effects - the tripods looked excellent crushing everything in their path, the death ray worked wonderfully (I just loved how the clothes from the people destroyed by the ray just fluttered down to Earth in the wind, totally unblemished - what a very novel idea I thought.) The electric storm effects were great too but the crowning glory had to be the aliens themselves - fantastic creations that looked every bit alien from the way they moved and behaved - their faces were totally obscene! One part of the movie had me in stitches, I won't say what it was but it happens about 35 minutes into this movie, it's just indicative of my type of humour.
The whole thing grabbed my intention from start to finish, quickly getting into the action which was practically non-stop all the way through.
The only thing which was a bit of a let down for me was the ending - the last scene. A little too mushy for me and a bit fairytailish.
I highly recommend this film to anyone, in my opinion it is much better than the original and I thought that the original was fantastic.
A typical Spielberg blockbuster!! 8 and half out of 10!