text: Save the $8.97 you'll spend at Walmart to buy this DVD and go see the real film by Steven Spielberg.<br /><br />I'm a filmmaker, and being an avid fan of H.G. Wells, I had to buy this hoping to sit down and watch three hours of good entertainment. Instead, it took four days to finish watching this because I couldn't stand watching more than 10 minutes at a time. It's horrible.<br /><br />There are reports that Timothy Hines had a $20 Million budget for this production. Where the heck did it go? Did he use most of it to buy a new house? Finance his retirement? Or what? Let me start with what is actually good about this film. It does stay true to the book AND there are a few good performances in it. I can respect the actors who obviously tried to make this a good film. But good performances were quickly overshadowed by horrible... and I do mean horrible special effects. Any freshman film school student could have done a much better job with the CGI. To me, most of it looked like "stop action" card board cutouts that were used rather than sophisticated CGI software that a $20 Million project should be using.<br /><br />There's no excuse for the amateur post production that was applied to this film. My own partner and I sat down and recreated our version of the Ferry scene using software that cost less than $1500.00 and within a day had five minutes of scene that looked better and more realistic than what Hines created. I've seen films with budgets of less than $2 Million look better. Much better.<br /><br />In my opinion the special effects used in the original King Kong were more sophisticated and better than Hines' special effects in this film. IN fact, I have a much better appreciation for Attack of the Killer Tomatoes because of this film. There's no excuse with today's technology for a film to look like a 50's B-Movie unless that was the intention, which shouldn't have been with this particular project.<br /><br />A problem I had with the DVD transfer was that the film is jerky, another demonstration of amateur film-making.<br /><br />Overall, I have to say that I produced a $45,000 project in 2003 that have better cinematography and special effects than this film.<br /><br />I strongly encourage anyone who appreciates good film-making or who is a fan of WOTW to leave this film on the shelf and watch Attack of the 50 Foot Woman instead. It would be easier on the eyes.