***Journey to the Centre of the Earth (2008)***

My son has been asking to watch this as we missed it at the cinema. I managed to get it to rent for only £2, from my local library for 1 week, which I thought was a bargain.

***Main Cast***

Brendan Fraser – Professor Trevor Anderson
Josh Hutcherson – Sean Anderson
Anita Briem - Hannah Ásgeirsson
Jean Michel Paré – Max Anderson
Jane Wheeler – Elizabeth Anderson

It is 93 minutes in length.

***Plot***

The film starts off with a man being chased by a dinosaur in a red hot lava type world. It then quickly comes back to the present day and introduces Brendan Fraser as Professor Trevor Anderson as a scientist. It transpires that Trevor’s brother Max has gone missing.

Max’s son Sean goes to stay for 10 days with his uncle Trevor, whilst his mother is packing for a move to Canada. When she drops Sean off, she also brings a box containing Max’s work (who was also a scientist). Within minutes of reading the material, Trevor quickly deduces that Max was last working in Iceland trying to discover a way to reach the centre of the earth. They decide to use some money saved in jars to whisk them off to Iceland to shed light on Max’s disappearance….as you do! (This is definitely not a movie that you should consider switching your brain on for!)

On arrival they enlist the help of a pretty guide, who will help them up the mountain. As Trevor uses one of his instruments there is a thunderstorm and they seek shelter in a cave, but quickly become trapped. They explore the cave and end up taking a ride on a mine type truck, which quickly runs away out of control (very much a copy of the Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom sequence). At the end of the ride they find gems embedded in the walls of the cave.

It is around this point that they find themselves stranded at the centre of another world at the earth’s core. I will not give any more of the plot away, except to say that apart from a couple of scenes that make you jump, it is all quite predictable.

***Acting Performances**

~Brendan Fraser~

Brendan Fraser performs well enough, but is not different to Inkheart etc. This is just more of the same. In fact, I haven’t enjoyed watching him in anything since The Mummy. Sometimes, I feel that he is given one liners to say in the same vein as Indiana Jones, but it just doesn’t seem to work the same. Perhaps it is time for him to move on from this type of role and try something a bit more demanding.

~Hannah Ásgeirsson~

Her performance is acceptable, but nothing to write home about. She reminds me very much of the actress in National Treasure. She is believable as the love interest, but wasn’t that feisty and generally I have to say that I didn’t really care what happened to her character.

~Sean Anderson~

I thought that he played his part quite well given what he had to work with. He had one quite sad scene, which I though he managed ok. There won’t be any Oscar nominations though. It was a character that has been done many, many times before.

***Soundtrack***

Not memorable at all, typical orchestra stuff building up to a crescendo at vital moments. When the film was over, I couldn’t recall any of the music used.

***Overall Opinion***

I think that the film gets off to quite a slow and boring start. In fact, my son kept asking if we could fast forward it a bit. There is also too much technical jargon spoken very quickly, which again just encourages you to stop trying to actually follow the dialogue. It may be just me, but at times the dialogue is fuzzy and they just don’t speak clearly enough.

There were some good scenes that made you jump and also kept you in suspense. For example they realise they are standing on a very thin rock formation during one sequence.

This film has some good points, but is not memorable. It is best not to be taken seriously. I believe that it was possible to watch this in 3D at the cinema, which I think would have been a good experience. The film does get much better, once they reach the centre of the earth and we enter the realms of fantasy and action.

Having said this some of the special effects are a bit ropey, for instance there is scene that involves falling and having a conversation at the same time, which is just terrible – children are just not that gullible!

One thing I felt the film was lacking was the introduction of any new characters. If you have an excellent script with strong characters and relationships that are developed then this is fine, but here it all became a bit bland and boring.

I felt that this film was film making by numbers, there was not enough thought given to the relationships between the characters and I felt that even at the centre of the earth, the threats that came at them were too few and not terrifying enough. You watched it knowing there would be no shocks. The writing was lazy and quite predictable.

There was one scene of sadness, but overall you would definitely not need your hankie!

I think that there hasn’t been a really good children’s adventure film done for ages. Scripts are poor and there are always gaping plot holes, which lead to children asking question after question that you just can’t answer.

I will give it a generous 3 stars as we did stick through it and my children did get some entertainment value out of it. Even so, after I pressed the stop button, they launched into exactly what they thought was wrong with it. So perhaps I have been very generous.

***Availability***

This is available in 3D for £6.98 from Amazon, but I don’t think personally it is one to keep. There were no extra features available on my dvd possibly because this was a rental copy.