JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH is dramatic cotton candy. Characterizations are thin. Dialogue is bare bones. The majority of the running time is allocated to action set pieces that (shall we say) stretch credibility? I doubt it would stand up to heavy scrutiny in 2-D and I wonder if some of the effects would play very well even in the home theater environment. But slip on those 3-D glasses and what a glorious confection it becomes.
This movie barely rates three out of five stars in the Spout rating system but see it in 3-D and the movie rates four stars for novelty alone. The world premiere took place at the Los Angeles Film Festival this past Sunday. Brendan Frasier was in attendance and he thanked a number of people who were (blah, blah, blah) integral to the making of the film (insert names of studio execs here). Get on with the movie Brendan! You look good but my attention is waning!
This is a movie that knows what it is. If effectively creates a story almost exclusively built around a place never before seen (the center of the Earth) and imagines what it might look like from top to bottom. Since the burden of realism no longer exists our minds are free to go wherever the filmmakers want to take us and for the most part, we buy in.
The filmmakers also understand that as a cotton candy experience we would appreciate an attractive cast. They smartly build in a story scenario where the center of the Earth periodically heats up to 200 degrees, a temperature making human life impossible. So there is your ticking clock. Our protagonists must get out of the center of the Earth before the temp spikes to said temperature. The unintended (and much appreciated) effect of this is that we get to see Brendan Frasier in a sleeveless muscle shirt through much of the movie and for the other part of the audience Anita Briem gets into her short shorts and stays that way until the end of the movie.
There is a mine car / roller coaster ride that recalls the same action set piece from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (it is equally hard to swallow here). There is a Tyrannosaur chasing a kid (there needs to be a Tyrannosaur in every movie these days doesn't there?). And of course, in the movies, it is always possible to ride a geyser thousands of feet into the sky and land safely while sliding down a sloping mountainside (happens to me every day).
All of this aside, the true hero of this movie is Real D, the 3-D process that makes the ride enjoyable and crystal clear. This is from the viewer who sat on the left side of the theater in the fourth row in front of a huge movie screen at the Mann's Village in Westwood. And in terms of the 3-D let me say that my favorite scene was a very slow moving and kind of fascinating scene in which "the kid" (Josh Hutcherson) has to leap across a field of magnetic rocks suspended in the air to reach a distant plateau. It's not that the scene was brilliantly conceived. It's just that it looked kind of cool in 3-D.
From all of this I take the following...
Make 3-D movies that go to places we have never imagined before. We buy in to the artificiality all the more. Keep the 3-D coming but easy on the forced shots of people spitting stuff on the camera or poking you with a long poker. It's just a little bit cheesy. And yes, we would really prefer a good story with a well developed script so work on that, o.k.? Next time, consider letting a real filmmaker have a shot. Someone with a sense of story. Someone willing to take risks. Where are the latter day Speilberg's and Cameron's and Lucas types anyway? I would think that 3-D would offer someone talented a real opportunity to show their stuff.