Journey to the Center of the Earth ( ** )

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 16:58:30 +0000
Bill Wine - Celebrity News Service Movie Critic

92 minutes

In theaters July 11, 2008

Rating: PG, Adventure fantasy

What the new Journey to the Center of the Earth could have used a lot more of were journeys to the cutting room floor.

The first big-screen incarnation of Journey to the Center of the Earth, a drama about a fantastical subterranean expedition, was a 1959 version with James Mason and Pat Boone. And there have been several made-for-television adaptations. French science fiction author Jules Verne wrote Journey to the Center of the Earth in 1864. It now joins his Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and Around the World in Eighty Days in being turned into feature films, this one for the second time.

Does one good Verne deserve another? Another what? How about another movie-as-theme-park-ride?

The problem with this version is simple: it's a 1-D movie in the 3-D format.

Brendan Fraser plays a geology professor who, with the help of his nephew, played by Josh Hutcherson, and an Icelandic mountain guide, played by Anita Briem, explores the planet's core by using a marked-up copy of Verne's novel as a guidebook. The book belonged to his brother, who disappeared years ago while conducting research that took him to the "center of the earth." So now the younger brother, in looking for his older brother, will take up where he left off.

And the three intrepid explorers will experience whatever the heck is down there, however fantastic, however intimidating, however deep and pointy they look through those improved plastic glasses that we're wearing.

Journey to the Center of the Earth is of historical film-history interest as the first live-action narrative feature film to be shot entirely in the digital 3-D process. Shot with high-tech 3-D cameras developed by Titanic director James Cameron, the film was directed by debuting Eric Brevig, who served as the visual-effects supervisor on Cameron's The Abyss.

Let's be kind here and just say that, as storytelling directors of actors and developers of characters go, Brevig is a talented special-effects supervisor who cannot resist reminding us every few minutes that we're watching a 3-D movie by, if need be, spitting toothpaste at us. Yuck.

Needless to say, this will do nothing for viewers watching this otherwise hamfisted movie in 2-D.

The Real 3-D process is certainly the tail that wags the dinosaur here, with sequences involving acrobatic sharks attacking, a T-rex rampaging, and a runaway mine cart on rickety rails speeding to who-knows-where. But the makers might have put at least a little creative energy into everything else. There is, after all, a story about people being told.

The sets never for an instant look like anything but movie sets, but the kids won't mind. Nor might they notice or care that Fraser is more action hero than scientist/professor. At times -- at a lot of times -- it's more like a museum specialty attraction than a narrative feature film.

JTTCOTE is fanciful enough and might give certain kids a pleasing vicarious experience. But only the little impressionable ones. Everyone else will notice just how cheeseball and clunky it is, and just how cardboard-bland the characters and how anemic the performances.

Aah, maybe that stuff would just get in the way anyway. Maybe production values are beside the point. Maybe criticizing them is tantamount to critiquing the line readings of employees at a Disney park's Adventureland. After all, how many ways can you say, "Please keep your hands and feet inside the tram"? This is, when you come right down to it, really just a 90-minute theme park ride, one that never takes itself too seriously (a saving grace, actually, because either do we), but one never to be mistaken for a good movie.

See the intra-terrestrial family adventure, Journey to the Center of the Earth, in 3-D if you can. And for the trip, pack warm mittens, healthy snacks, and real low expectations.