CAPSULE: Fun as thrill ride, but surprisingly poor as
      film, this is a story of three modern reluctant
      explorers who find out that the center of the Earth
      is just as Jules Verne described it with a lot of
      fast theme-park-like rides.  It has even less logic
      than Verne gave it.  Rent the 1959 version.  Rating:
      0 (-4 to +4) or 4/10

  The 3D effects of JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH 3D are
  almost worth the price of admission.  That means this film as a
  whole is almost worth the price of admission.  As an adaptation
  of Jules Verne's novel this film is nearly worthless.  In
  fairness I should say that no Jules Verne novel has ever been
  translated well to the screen and probably never will be.  That
  is just not how Verne writes generally.  Possibly the best film
  version of a Verne novel is the Disney 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE
  SEA, but that film has a lot of inventing.  In the book, after
  the main characters are brought aboard the Nautilus they mostly
  just see wonders rather than have adventures.  Similarly, in
  Verne's novel JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH there is not
  much action.  Aside from occasional separations from the main
  party the characters mostly just see occasionally scary wonders.
  The 1959 film was one of the highlights of my youth but it made
  good cinema only because of heavy revisions to Verne's story by
  the writing team of Walter Reisch and Charles Bracket who had
  previously written films like NINOTCHKA and TITANIC (1953).

  Strictly speaking, the new 3D version of JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF
  THE EARTH is not an adaptation at all.  It is an adventure that
  takes place in our world with characters who are very much aware
  of the Verne novel.  (A similar approach was taken to the 2002
  version of THE TIME MACHINE.)  This film is more a vehicle to
  show off 3D effects than it is to tell a real story.  Life in the
  interior of the Earth seems to have aspects of theme park rides,
  video games, and both Disney and Warner Brothers cartoons.  There
  are some nice renderings of engravings from Jules Verne books
  into real-looking albeit digital sets.

  Trevor Anderson (played by Brendan Fraser) is a scientist who
  discovers that he has to play host to his nephew Sean (Josh
  Hutcherson) for two weeks.  At the same time he discovers that
  for some reason he has a limited time to access volcanic chimneys
  into the center of the Earth.  The reason for the rush is
  unexplained by it has something to do with changing numbers on a
  computer screen so it must be scientific.

  Trevor packs up the nephew and off they head for Iceland.  Along
  the way they pick up Hannah sgeirsson (Anita Briem) the daughter
  of a scientist who worked with Max.  Max was Trevor's brother,
  Sean's father, and a friend of Hannah's late father.  The name
  sgeirsson, incidentally, means "Son of Asgeir" and would never
  be given to a woman.  The credits list her father as Sigurbj rn
  sgeirsson so she should have been Hannah Sigurbj rnsdottir.
  Briem would have known that, being Icelandic herself, but getting
  things accurate was just not where this film was at.  The group
  came to study the chimneys, but soon they are trapped inside the
  Earth a long distance below the surface.  Which brings us to the
  falls.

  Our hearty band frequently falls distances of many miles and
  manages to land with no ill effects, like Alice in Wonderland.
  Two such falls and they make it to the center of the Earth.  That
  saves time and story-telling, but it cuts out most of what would
  be interesting in the film.  Admittedly, how far down the center
  of the Earth is a moot point.  If the center is just a single
  point it could be a long way down.  If "center" refers to a very
  large region it might not be that far down.  (Think of it this
  way.  The center of an inflated balloon is a pocket of compressed
  air that begins a small fraction of an inch below the surface.)

  These are most unusual explorers.  They can fall hundreds of
  miles and land without breaking a bone.  Hundreds of miles
  beneath the surface of the Earth they never seem greatly
  concerned for how they can get to safety.  In 105-degree
  temperatures they never seem to break a sweat or in the case of
  Hannah even smear her lipstick.  At one point a character is
  jumping from one rock to the next in a line of rocks floating in
  air suspended by magnetism.  Somehow he manages to do this
  without imparting any rotational momentum until he gets to the
  very last rock.  It just plays better if only the last rock has a
  rotational momentum.  The travelers brought no food with them and
  rarely seem to pass much that is edible, but they always seem to
  be well-fed.  The film exempts itself from any laws of physics or
  logic.  Luminous birds that glow like fireflies illuminate the
  world beneath the earth.  These are birds from 150 million years
  in our past, yet they look more like modern bluebirds than like
  the archaeopteryx of that period.  What is more, the birds seem
  to understand English and show very human-like expressions like
  some fugitives from Disney's CINDERELLA.  One of the birds adopts
  the travelers and follows them around like Tinkerbell.

  Visually the film has some nice moments, but not all of the
  images work.  There is a large Tyrannosaurus Rex that looks like
  a digital animation and is not believable as a living animal the
  way the T-rex in JURASSIC PARK did.  Too often the lighting is
  too dim to really see the dimensional imagery to its full effect.
  There is some blurring.  Frequently the left- and right-eye
  images do not coalesce.  The 3D work, virtually the film's only
  virtue, is a step down from that of BEOWULF.  For me it would be
  very hard for JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH (2008) to match
  the enjoyment that the 1959 version brought me.  However, this
  film does not even come close.  The 3D effects are actually quite
  nice usually, but see it for the 3D or not at all.  I rate the
  film a 0 on the -4 to +4 scale or 4/10.

  Film Credits: <http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0373051/>

                                        Mark R. Leeper
                                        mlee...@optonline.net
                                        Copyright 2008 Mark R. Leeper