The Time Machine

This smashing science-fiction adaptation of H.G. Wells's famous novel has more creativity in every frame than most latter-day rip-offs have in their entirety. Read full review

The meat of Wells’ novel is sacrificed in favor of all-out spectacle, but in that respect the movie works marvelously. Read full review

The Time Machine is an old-fashioned adventure that tries to remain as true to the original text as it could (the ending of the book isn't the same here, along with various other additions and changes) with an excellent score, great special effects, and a story that keeps you watching thanks to the excellent narration throughout the film. Read full review

Wells purists may balk, and Pal’s then state-of-the-art effects do look cheesy by today’s Industrial Light & Magic standards, but The Time Machine retains an appealing Victorian charm. Taylor, the Mel Gibson of the ’60s, is a pleasure to watch. Read full review

The social comment of the original has been historically refined to encompass such plausible eventualities as the physical manifestation of atomic war weapons. But the basic spirit of Wells' work has not been lost. Read full review

The machine itself is a beauty, with a red velvet seat and gadgets made of ivory and rock crystal, and the time-travel effects help to make this film one of the best of its kind. However, it deteriorates into comic-strip grotesqueries when the fat ogreish future race of Morlocks torments the effete, platinum-blond, vacant-eyed race of Eloi.

Parts of it are colorful and imaginative, but the film flattens out toward the end. Read full review

The drama, for all its invention, is creaky and a bit passé. (Apparently there has still been no contact with other planets in 800,000 A. D.) And the mood, while delicately wistful, is not so flippant or droll as it might be in a fiction as fanciful and flighty as this one naturally is. Read full review

The quaint time machine and Oscar-winning special effects hold one's interest initially, but the overall effect is one of glossy emptiness. Read full review