JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH (2008)

Action/Adventure/Family/Science Fiction/Fantasy, PG, 92 mins.

***1/2 out of *****.

Erik Brevig, an experienced visual effects artist, makes his feature film directing debut with this update of Jules Verne’s classic sci-fi novel about a group of people making an effort to reach the center of the earth to further mankind’s scientific knowledge. Screenwriter Michael Weiss boasts an impressive list of crappy movies, including direct-to-video features like Octopus , Crocodile, U.S. Seals II (a sequel to a rip-off…), Octopus 2: River of Fear and, get this, I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer. Good thing I researched all this after I saw the movie, otherwise I probably would have skipped it.

This is, however, the best version of the novel that has ever been made for the screen. I’ve seen most of the other film adaptations of the story, so I had low expectations but high hopes, since so much had been left undone as far as putting Verne’s actual story on the screen.

While the previous films took wild liberties with the source, this one takes a completely different approach, it literally presents itself as though Jules Verne wrote the novel based on a true expedition. Professor Trevor Anderson (Brendan Fraser), carries a copy of the novel through the movie with him as sort of a map to guide him, his nephew Sean, and their hottie Icelandic mountain guide Hannah through the dangers that they encounter on their journey through the earth’s crust.

In an effort to prove the potential truth of his long-missing brother’s research and theories (and to get along with his smart-ass nephew), Anderson sets off on this quest to penetrate the earth’s crust through a volcano in Iceland. What follows is a remarkably faithful presentation of Verne’s story, which doesn’t really matter because most people will be more interested in the 3D anyway.

And the 3D is impressive, by the way. We have come a long way since those red and blue sunglasses that just made everything look red and blue, the 3D here is so realistic that the obligatory jump-through-the-screen moments may cause even the most judicious of us to raise our eyebrows. Sadly, that realism is the new novelty, so the movie can’t help halting in its tracks every ten minutes or so for a nice 3D wow-moment. I hate that.

It should be noted that this is a family film, so don’t expect high adventure or danger the likes of which you should expect to find on a journey anywhere where no one has ever been before. As a guide, I have developed a theory that, in a movie like this, the character who doesn’t know anything (Sean, the nephew), is about the age of the target audience, because he is the one that needs to have everything explained to him, for the audience’s benefit. Sean is 13.

Professor Anderson wishing that Jules Verne had written a shorter book.

There is, however, an immediate and crippling discrepancy with the story. Before anything happens resembling any journey anywhere, we get a Toyota Prius commercial, a PSP commercial, plugs for Mountain Dew, Tivo, Family Guy, and Iceland Airlines, and the strange revelations that a PSP can “Google at 30,000 feet” and a punk teenager can receive calls on his cell phone while trapped miles below the earth’s surface. That’s news to me!

The problem is that the story of a journey, as Anderson describes it, through the earth’s crust and into the mantle, requires a fundamental lack of modern scientific knowledge. So it follows that in a society that has commercial airlines, hybrid vehicles, portable video game devices that can search the internet at cruising altitude, cell phones that work anywhere on or in the planet, and modern computers, should also understand that a journey to the “center of the earth” is, as they say, an exercise in futility.

See? Your standard eighth grade Earth Science book knows what it looks like in there!

Nonetheless, this could be a great way to spend some time with the kids this weekend and, although there is one emotional moment and one romantic moment in the movie and both fall completely flat, it’s not the worst date movie I’ve ever seen. There are some clever and amusing scenes (”We’re STILL falling!”) but also plenty of cheeseball dialogue and half-assed performances (Fraser’s quivering lip is just too much…), but despite the roller coaster ride lifted right out of Indiana Jones and the bizarre idea of the magnetic rocks, the movie surpasses expectations. At least if you know what came before it…

Professor Anderson and his nephew Sean, in a screen moment where they encounter a creature that betrays a stupendous lack of imagination on the part of the digital effects team.