Journey to the Center of the Earth Review
If you aren't a Brenden Fraser fan, stop right here and search for another film.
If you are, you'll like "Journey".
This is a good family film. We were able to watch it very comfortably with our 9 year old grand-daughter.
The movie, which is about three people trapped far beneath the earth with prehistoric plants and creatures, is both exciting and funny. The main characters are all likable, and Brendan Fraser is at his charming and funny best.
Sadly, even if you do all the work to correctly track down the 3D dvd version of this film and the 3D glasses. it won't do you much good. The home 3D presentation doesn't exactly jump off the screen at you, so my advice would be to skip the extra trouble and expense that I went through to that end.
Suspension of disbelief is no greater for this 'follow-up' film than it was for the Verne book or for the original movie with James Mason and Pat Boone. The special effects are good, and the same solid dinosaurs about to eat people type that you've come to appreciate ever since Jurassic Park. The story is NOT meant to be a cover of the Verne book, it is sort of a sequel, in a way. That element of the movie was handled in a very interesting fashion.
This is not the best movie you've ever seen, but it is enjoyable, and one of few you can enjoy with the family, so it does have value.
Journey to the Center of the Earth Overview
ON A QUEST TO FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENED TO HIS MISSING BROTHER, A SCIENTIST, HIS NEPHEW & THEIR MOUNTAIN GUIDE DISCOVER A FANTASTIC & DANGEROUS LOST WORLD IN THE CENTER OF THE EARTH.
Journey to the Center of the Earth Specifications
When a seismic geologist (Brendan Fraser) discovers his lost brother's notes in a copy of the titular Jules Verne novel, he and his nephew (Josh Hutcherson, Bridge to Terabithia, Zathura) head to Iceland. There, joined by a fetching mountain guide (played by Icelandic actress Anita Briem), they get trapped in a cavern and go down, down, down, finally arriving in a primeval underworld full of prehistoric beasts and carnivorous plants. It would be pointless to complain about the empty-headedness of it all; Journey to the Center of the Earth aspires to be a kinesthetic experience. It wants to engage your adrenal glands, not your brain or your heart (the dialogue and characters are so generic, the script may have been cut-and-pasted from previous versions of Verne's book). Fraser, with his goofy handsomeness and accessible presence, provides a reasonably human axis around which all the frantic flying and swooping CGI effects revolve. The movie is as hollow as the world it depicts, but as mindless action movies go, you could do a lot worse. (Note: Journey to the Center of the Earth was released in theaters in 3-D, full of whizz-bang demonstrations of how far 3-D technology had come--trilobite antennae quivering towards the audience, a T-rex lunging out of the frame, even affable star Brendan Fraser spitting on us--as well as a half-dozen action sequences clearly destined to become video games or theme park rides.) --Bret Fetzer
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