Movie Review - 'Journey to the Center of the Earth'
Friday, July 11, 2008 at 12:08AM Journey to the Center of the EarthStarring Brendan Fraser, Josh Hutcherson, and Anita Briem
Directed by Eric Brevig
Rated PG
There are moments in
Journey to the Center of the Earth
where you’re forced to forget the story for a minute and just marvel at some
of the best live action 3-D ever captured on film. And then there are
moments where you’re stuck watching a story so insipid that no amount of 3-D
could save it, no matter how sensational it may all look.
Heavy on the fiction and short on the science, this new telling of Jules Verne’s classic adventure actually uses the book as a journal, a how-to guide when a scientist (Brendan Fraser), his nephew (Josh Hutcherson from Bridge to Terabithia), and an Icelandic blonde thrown in for good measure (Anita Briem) go searching for volcanic tubes. As we all know from studying years of quarter-baked movie science, the quickest way to the center of the Earth is freefalling thousands of miles down volcanic tubes hoping for a soft landing.
The initial spin on the story – that this quest actually mirrors the one in the book instead of being the one in the book – is a modest invention, and frankly, it’s the closest thing to innovation in the entire script. The action is sloppy and hard to digest but at least the cast is small so there are fewer things to account for. Fraser can be seen playing this exact same character in about a month in the next Mummy movie; in fairness, one-dimensional heroes don’t get a lot of wiggle room. Hutcherson is growing into a reliable teen actor, and Briem is a nice find, reminiscent of Rachel Weisz in Fraser’s first Mummy outing.
But the 3-D is what’s really on display in Journey to the Center of the Earth, and though at times it can be a little disorienting - I had to remove my glasses three or four times to recalibrate - it does advance film to another plateau on the technology mountain.
Reader Comments (3)
My favorite version of Journey is still the old Hanna Barbara saturday morning romp with Lars and the duck.
Good peyote, that!
I just rewatched the original and amd still amazed at the imaginative, allbeit a bit dated, speacial effects that were so cutting edge for the late 50's. I really wish teh remake would have kept more with the original storyline complete with Gertrude the duck, the competeing scientissts and a shirtless beefcake pat Boone crooning to the professors daughter.
I just rewatched the original and amd still amazed at the imaginative, allbeit a bit dated, speacial effects that were so cutting edge for the late 50's. I really wish teh remake would have kept more with the original storyline complete with Gertrude the duck, the competeing scientissts and a shirtless beefcake pat Boone crooning to the professors daughter.