Journey to the Center of the Earth

Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008) starring Brendan Fraser, Josh Hutcherson, and Anita Briem.

Before...I feared this film. A take on Jules Vernes classic Journey to the Center of the Earth with Fraser, who at times can be great and at others can be down right awful. What more due to seeing it on the small screen, rather than in the cinema, I wouldn't get the benefit of the 3D imagery unfortunately. So all in all my hopes were low for this film.

Professor Trevor Anderson (Fraser) receives his teenager nephew Sean Anderson (Hutcherson). He will spend ten days with his uncle while his mother, Elizabeth, prepares to move to Canada. She gives a box to Trevor that belonged to his missing brother, Max, and Trevor finds a book with references to the last journey of his brother. He decides to follow the steps of Max with Sean and they travel to Iceland, where they meet the guide Hannah Ásgeirsson (Briem). While climbing a mountain, there is a thunderstorm and they protect themselves in a cave. However, a lightening collapses the entrance and the trio is trapped in the cave. They seek an exit and falls in a hole, discovering a lost world in the center of the Earth.

Where to start...this film was meant to be seen 3D and it would have been a lot better if I had seen it such. The non-3D version doesn't cut any shots, it simply have the zooming out of the screen-ness that 3D films give you. It is a real showcase for 3D films and even though I didn't see it in 3D I could almost imagine each and every 3D shot that I saw without the need for the 3D glasses. This is the real shame, not of the film, but of the fact that I didn't see it in 3D.

The acting is brilliantly camp and it works fantastically. Fraser camps it up brilliantly, as does his fellow two key actors. There is an honesty and a realism that gives the film the lightness and humour to lift it in the league of other films of it's kind, here I refer to Robert Rodriguez's Spy Kids films all of which I have a lot of time for.

The difference between this and Rodriguez's Spy Kids films is that this is more adult friendly. The subtle adult humour of the piece is not unlike the sort of humour you would expect from Disney/Pixar films. It does it fantastically, the odd nod suggests a depth of film knowledge that hints at Indy/Rick O'Connell-esque fun. It is this type of role that Fraser excels in.

The plot jumps from peril to peril and yet it does it in such a way that lifts it above the other films that are similar to it. Through the humour and also the Indy style adventure this is a film that surprisingly was very entertaining and I look forward to Fraser doing more of this type of work. A thoroughly enjoyable blockbuster like this definitely deserves...

★★★★☆