At first, this latest version of the H.G. Wells novel looks as solid as the titular contraption itself a heart-stirring vision of deep-buttoned leather, whirring brass and glinting lenses. Even when Guy Pearces Professor Hartdegen travels into the near future, some nifty visual trickery abounds, particularly the sight of him suspended in a time-immune bubble as the modern world sprouts up around him.
Sadly, when he is inadvertently propelled a further 800,000 years hence, to a time when mankind has devolved into two sub-species the lily-livered Eloi and the brutish Morlocks this stops being a charming boys own adventure of the old school and becomes a rubbish, by-the-numbers action movie of the new.
Jeremy Irons (looking like an albino S&M Boy George) turns up for a bit of extended exposition and a crap fight, before the worlds finely-balanced eco-system bites it in a welter of middling CGI.