I didn't enjoy this movie as much as I thought I would.  First of all, and those of you who read these, but don't live in Medicine Hat won't know what this is about, but the outdated digital sound system at the Towne Cinema, made it hard to hear the main characters and even the roof leaking is not as irritating as not being able to hear clearly the lines that are important to the movie.  A person can move to avoid the water dripping, but you can't move to hear better.  But I digress.   What disappointed me was that the movie was shallow in content.  Roger Ebert says "...a big, clunky movie containing some sensational sights but lacking the zest and joyous energy we expect from Steven Spielberg."  Too much Hollywood special effects and not enough human drama, and that was what H.G. Wells was writing about.  There were moments where the human drama came out,  but they were far and few between.  And there were scenes that were unnecessary.  This movie will draw on the names of Tom Cruise and Dakota Fanning.   I'm sure Fanning was cast because there is no child star that I can name who can portray a frightened child quite like Fanning.  She's made a career of it.  And while Cruise put in a good performance and will bring in the numbers, I don't think he is particularly well cast. Ideally I wanted to view the original 1953 version of this movie before I reviewed the 2005 Tom Cruise version, but I couldn't find a copy.  Now I find out there is a DVD version, but I wasn't up to watching that one.  I wanted to compare the versions as to their focus to the human drama, rather than  the space ships. For the record War Of The Worlds is rated PG-13 for frightening sequences of sci-fi violence and disturbing images.   Our showing had quite a number of smaller children who would have trouble understanding the movie and might well be frightened by the images, but maybe they came to see Fanning.  I wouldn't recommend it for small children.

Lutz's Rating Judy's Rating

Storyline From Yahoo:  A contemporary retelling of H.G. Wells's seminal classic, the sci-fi adventure thriller reveals the extraordinary battle for the future of humankind through the eyes of one American family fighting to survive Ratings: Critics  B    Users B