Kids and Monsters

Journey to the Center of the Earth Directed by Eric Brevig

Anyone unfamiliar with Jules Verne’s 1864 novel Journey to the Center of the Earth may find themselves massively confused by the new 3-D, meta-film version: Honestly, who the hell wants to travel to the Earth’s center and land in all that magma? But Verne’s vision includes underground waterfalls, dinosaurs and an ocean—none of which seem really worth the endless and dangerous trip in the movie.

While saddled with his 13-year-old nephew Sean (Josh Hutcherson), Professor Trevor Anderson (Brendan Fraser) suddenly realizes that his 10-years-missing brother disappeared in Iceland while trying to discover if his brother Max was a Vernian (a completely fictional group who believe that Verne’s sci-fi novels are actually non-fiction). So amidst many yo-yos and flying model neutrons and protons coming at the audience, both of them hop on the next flight, using clues written in the margins of Max’s copy of the novel. Once in Iceland, they seek out a man who might have assisted Max, but find only his surviving daughter Hanna (Anita Briem), who offers to take them to the top of a mountain. Before long, they’ve been trapped in a cave-in, survived out-of-control mining carts and found a room full of enormous diamonds before they finally plunge for what seems like minutes into the titular location.

The usual children’s action-adventure tropes are all here: the missing father figure, a friendly animal that does all but talk (this isn’t a Disney movie, after all), a very chaste and tentative romance between the adults and plenty of not-very-serious danger. Don’t confuse them with the spelunkers in 2006’s Descent; that the three fearless explorers will eventually make it out alive is pretty definite, despite the rampaging dinosaurs and ever-bubbling magma.

Fraser, who has aged into the fleshy handsomeness of a gay porn star, turns in a too-broad performance; some of his line-readings are so bizarre that they’d turn into camp if they were more interesting. As the sulky teen, Hutcherson is not nearly as distracting as some of his more irritating colleagues (even when he’s talking aloud to a phosphorescent bird), but Briem is the movie’s find. Prettier and more feminine than an Icelandic hiking guide has any right to be, she alone seems to take the whole movie just seriously enough, always delivering sincerity with a glint in her eyes for the grown-ups in the audience.

But while the actual meat of the film features at least one spectacular sequence involving a chasm and floating magnetic rocks, the rest is marred by badly conceived 3-D effects. The last time anyone spied a yo-yo in a movie was probably Jaws 3-D, and yet here’s Sean, twirling one into the audience’s face. The Woody Allen version of the old cardboard 3-D glasses is definitely cool, but most of the effects settle for shock value, rather than using the format in a more interesting way. The filmmakers must have decided that since all of the action would be hitting the audience in the face, all of the action scenes should last twice as long. In theory, maybe. But take my advice: If you see Journey to the Center of the Earth, sit as far back as you can. After 90 minutes of spit, random objects and dinosaur mucus flying at you, sitting too close to the screen will leave you with one hell of a headache.