Journey to the Center of the Earth

It shocks me that the original Jurassic Park movie is now 15 years old, and some recent films still can't match its technical wizardry. Journey to the Center of the Earth gives us a dinosaur, carnivorous plants, oversized prehistoric fish, and something that looks like a glow-in-the-dark bluebird. But none of these effects look remotely realistic when combined with the human actors. They actually don't look very convincing in the first place, and look like they'd be more at home in your Xbox 360. If that was the only knock against Journey, I could look past that, but the movie is also gimmicky and quite pointless to boot.

Despite the title, the film is not actually an adaptation of the classic Jules Verne adventure story, although the book does play a big part in the plot. College professor and scientist, Trevor Anderson (Brendan Fraser), lost his brother a little over ten years ago. It seems that the brother was an adventurer who believed that the stories told in the classic novel were true, and devoted his life to discovering the secret underground world that Verne wrote about. Trevor's 13-year-old nephew Sean (Josh Hutcherson) comes to visit, and barely five minutes pass before the two are on a flight to Iceland after deciphering a key riddle that the brother had written down in his copy of the book. The fact that the two are off on a globe-trotting adventure before the kid has time to unload his stuff kind of tells you early on that pacing is going to be a key problem here. Shortly after arriving, the two befriend and hire a young guide named Hannah (Anita Briem), who leads them to a volcanic cave. It's here that they discover the legendary world beneath the Earth's surface, and go on a wild theme park-inspired adventure where they dodge ancient beasts, and fly across rickety old mine tracks.

Journey to the Center of the Earth was designed to be viewed in digital 3D. Unfortunately, it seems that the format is not catching on quite as quickly as the filmmakers originally intended, so many theaters are showing it in standard 2D. That's how I saw the film, and when you take away its central and sole gimmick, the movie pretty much falls apart. It's especially annoying during the film's early sequences, where the actors keep on turning directly to the camera, and throwing things at the screen that are supposed to jump out at you. In the first 10 minutes alone, the camera is assaulted by the studio logo and opening credits, a tape measure, a yo-yo, some plastic balls, and even the water that Brendan Fraser spits out after brushing his teeth. I obviously cannot vouch for the effectiveness of the film's 3D, but I imagine this approach would grow tiresome and contrived after a while. Since all this visual trickery is pretty much lost on the 2D version, we're left to just sit and wait for the plot to kick in. Like I said, it doesn't take long for our heroes to go off and running, but even then, the screenplay credited to no less than three different writers becomes depressingly shallow.

That's because it treats this other world the heroes stumble upon as a thrill ride, or perhaps a video game. The characters barely have time to register that they've discovered a lost civilization before they're falling down seemingly-endless pits, leaping across run away mine carts, escaping from stampeding beasts, and other such obstacles. Having seen Hellboy II right before I saw this film, the contrast between the two were as different as night and day. Hellboy is a wondrous and inventive film filled with imagination, and it actually seemed interested in the sights and worlds it had to show us. This movie has no time to slow down and admire its wonders. It's too busy thinking up more thrills that never really end up being all that thrilling, and having things fly at the camera so that audiences can say to themselves, "I bet that would look cool if I was actually watching this in 3D...". The movie seems to have been written solely around its central gimmick. Instead of an actual screenplay, they've given us a 90 minute technical demo that only certain audiences get to enjoy.

And yet, even if I was watching the movie the way it was intended to be seen, I think I would still be bored. Journey is never as exciting as it seems to think it is, and it just can't seem to figure out why we're supposed to care about anything we're seeing. This is a one-trick movie that is detached at every single emotional level. The lead characters are paper thin, and exist simply to run around and throw "clever" one-liners at each other. Brendan Fraser and young Josh Hutcherson are both actors that I have enjoyed and greatly admired in other films, but this movie doesn't let them slow down long enough to give actual performances. In fact, there's an unintentionally comical scene where Hutcherson is forced to jump across a series of floating platforms suspended in mid-air. Watching this, I couldn't help but think that all this scene needed was some coins magically suspended in mid-air, and we'd have a pretty fair live action recreation of a level from a Super Mario Bros. game.

Journey to the Center of the Earth plays like one of those short 3D films you see at Disney World. The big difference is that those only run 20 minutes tops, whereas this lasts just a little over 90 minutes. Strip away the 3D as well, and you have something that probably shouldn't be playing on as many screens as it is. Even as a gimmick movie, this doesn't really cut it. There needs to be a reason for the gimmick in the first place, and this movie wants us to be impressed with the same visual trick over and over again. With digital 3D expected to grow in the coming years, I can only hope that this serves as a template for future filmmakers of what not to do.

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