One thing should be made perfectly clear; Brendan Fraser is no James Mason, there, I said it and will stand by that undeniable fact to the end of time. The classic Jules Verne adventure tale of man’s Journey to the Center of the Earth was first adapted to the big screen back in 1959, with James Mason in the starring role and the likes of Pat Boone and Arlene Dahl providing back-up, but five decades later Hollywood’s latest crack at the classic would take a more comedic turn with star Brendan Fraser in the leading role in the hopes of re-igniting the magic that made the 1999 remake of The Mummy turn out so well.
The interesting thing about 2008’s Journey to the Center of the Earth is that it is not an adaptation of the Jules Verne novel, in fact, it's the author and his book that inspire the characters of this movie on their journey of discovery. In this particular adventure tale, we follow Trevor Anderson (Brendan Fraser) a Bostonian volcanologist whose older brother Max (Jean Michel Paré) went missing years ago and is now presumed dead and since then Trevor has been keeping his memory and geological theories alive while running his brother’s research facility at the local university. This becomes difficult when he is informed by Professor Alan Kitzens (Seth Meyers) that the funding for his brother’s lab is being pulled.
Did I mention this movie was filmed in startling 3D?
Like most movie scientists Trevor is of the absentminded variety and thus he had forgotten that his sister-in-law would be dropping off his nephew Sean (Josh Hutcherson), though after meeting the kid I'd try and forget about him as well, but along with Josh she drops off a box of items that belonged to Max and in that box is a copy of the Jules Verne novel Journey to the Center of the Earth and inside the book he finds notes written by his late brother that leads him to believe that the answers to Max’s theories lie somewhere in Iceland. Needless to say, Sean is able to convince his uncle to bring him along on this journey of discovery, it was his dad’s mission after all, and they eventually team up with local guide Hannah Ásgeirsson (Anita Briem) whose father was a "Vernian" like Sean’s dad was, as in people who believed that the works of Jules Verne were more science fact than science fiction, and she agrees to be their guide for a hefty hourly rate.
“Just promise me that if you find the Book of the Dead you won’t read it.”
What follows is a series of adventures that borrow elements from the book as well as throwing in a few new surprises of its own – a mine car escapade being especially surprising yet somewhat familiar – and our heroes will fall endless miles towards the center of the Earth where they will encounter glowing birds, trilobites, prehistoric piranha, a school of Plesiosaur, man-eating plants and a monstrous relative of the Tyrannosaurus Rex. There is a lot of fun to be had in this fast-paced adventure tale and I will admit that director Eric Brevig and his special effects teams did a wonderful job creating this fantasy world beneath the Earth's surface, and I do mean fantasy world because whatever science Jules Verne peppered in his novel with was pretty much abandoned for this particular cinematic venture. When Brendan Fraser exclaims “Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the center of the Earth” you kind of have to let your seven-year-old self take over.
Science Note: In neither this movie nor the 1959 version, nor the source Jules Verne novel, does anyone get anywhere near the literal "center" of the Earth. If this was the true center of the Earth our heroes would have been crushed to death by the enormous pressure of the Earth's center.
Stray Observations:
• When Trevor’s sister-in-law drops off her son she also gives Trevor a box of stuff that once belonged to his brother Max, but why wouldn’t she have given this stuff to her son? You’d think a kid would like to have a few keepsakes of his late father.
• Hannah must have a magical backpack as it somehow is able to hold enough rope for three people to rappel down two hundred feet. Not to mention that 200 feet of rope weighs in and around 80lbs, so times that by three and she’d need to be Captain America to carry that much weight around with her.
• Our heroes take a ride through an abandoned mine that was clearly designed by the same people who built the mine tracks in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. They even have mine cars that can leap large breaks in the track and then magically land back onto the rails safely.
• Josh encounters a Giganotosaurus, a dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous period, but exactly how does it survive in this subterranean world? A dinosaur of this size would need to eat roughly 300 lbs of meat each day and this arid landscape doesn’t seem too populated with prey of any sort.
• Trevor discovers that the temperature at the “center of the Earth” will eventually reach 200 degrees Fahrenheit, which means, not even dinosaurs could survive living down here.
As impossible as this all is at least the filmmakers didn’t simply stick fins on an iguana.
Implausibility’s aside the success of Journey to the Center of the Earth hinged on the likability of our leads and with Brendan Fraser, at the fore, you’re in pretty good hands-on that score and both Josh Hutcherson and Anita Briem were fine in their respective roles but this was clearly Fraser’s movie, it’s his goofy and charismatic charm that helps the viewer swallow much of the outlandish events that occur during the film’s ninety-minute runtime. Fraser may not be in the same league as James Mason but when it comes to roller-coaster B-movie fun there’s none better. What does harm this otherwise fun family adventure/comedy is the decision to make this a 3D extravaganza as not only does this badly date the film but the “comin'-at-ya” gimmicks are so forced and tacked on that they are more distracting than they are entertaining. Though to be fair, the flying piranha were kind of cool.
You will believe prehistoric piranha can fly.
Overall, this is a fun adventure film that never takes itself too seriously and aside from the few forced 3D moments, which look even weirder when watching in regular 2D, the movie is a visual feast and the modern special effects utilized to bring this exciting undertaking to life are quite breathtaking at times. Now, unlike in the James Mason version, our heroes do not discover the ruins of Atlantis but the movie does end with our cast discussing that the sunken continent could be their next journey, alas, that was not to be the case and instead we got Duane “The Rock” Johnson taking us on a journey to the Mysterious Island.
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