Movie 20: Journey To The Center Of The Earth

HA, NOT the Baader-Meinhof Complex. That will be coming in the next, lets say…oh sometime in the next week to 10 days.

Trevor’s (Brendan Fraser) brother went missing mysteriously a decade ago, and he continues his work in a lab that is about to lose it’s funding. They’re geologists (possibly seismologists, but it never really says and it doesn’t matter). His nephew is staying with him for 10 days while his sister in law relocates them to Canada, and she gives Trevor a box of his brothers stuff. In the box is a copy of Jules Verne’s Journey To The Center Of The Earth, his brothers favourite, with notes scribbled all over it. Some of the notes are seismic readings so Trevor rushes to his lab to see what the current craic is. Wait, yanks won’t get that as it’s a Scottish word. What the current readings are. They are exactly the same as 10 years before…

So off to Iceland they rush to find Professor Signaborgy Borgyborg and find that he is dead. He was a Vernian, like Max the lost brother. A Vernian is someone who believe that Verne’s book is a true account. They hike up the mountain to get some sensor readings, get stuck in a storm and end up trapped in a cave accidently. And the journey begins.

I’m dating a geologist, so can probably expect jokes like “we’re in deep schist” in my future. There’s the odd thing like that here but thankfully not too much. In fact as far as I can tell they’re relatively movie scientific about the whole thing. Some of its full on bollocks, but they use the right words and properties for anything that isn’t artistic license (free floating magnesium for one thing, it’s far too reactive for that).

But we’re talking about a family adventure movie here. You don’t expect hard science, you expect oil rig workers training to be astronauts. And this is actually a damned fine family adventure. Not an Oscar winner nor a Razzie, just something to watching on a bank holiday when your Gran is over for tea.

Funnily enough we watched the Pat Boone 1958 Journey at Christmas time. It’s a massive pile of unfettered boring arse. My gran would have been my age roughly when it came out and SHE was bored so that says something.

Parts of the movie feel like an upcoming Universal tour ride, there’s a mine car scene that was probably put in specifically a)for that purpose and b) cause this was in 3D in theatres, but that’s fine. There’s also an inexplicably smart glowing birdy too but I can let them away with that. It doesn’t TALK or anything, it just leads the teenager about and shakes its head once.

Yes, there’s the obligatory tween in this film for the kids to bond with. He’s played by Josh Hutcherson who’s done this kind of fair before (RV, Zathura) and he’s fine. Not too annoying and might prove to have some chops in the upcoming Red Dawn remake. And I like Brendan Fraser. Sure he’s made a few turkeys, but he’s just a likeable dude. Been a fan ever since California Man and he was excellent in Scrubs. Plus the first Mummy. We’ll pretend the third didn’t happen.

A lot of people might think that Anita Briem as the love interest came across quite unemotional in this but there’s a reason for that. Iceland. They are a stoic people. Whenever I watch a movie, after rating it on Love Film in case I ever need recommendations, Criticker (user name: realmacgyver) and Flixster (macgyver911 for some reason) I check the IMDB trivia and the like. Amongst the “those are cut diamonds, the geyser would boil them alive, etc” type corrects there’s a big one about how her character name is inaccurate due to Icelandic law. They have a government agency that regulates names to make sure they fit in with the convention. The correct ends with an exclamation mark because “Ya, it’s totally ridiculous huh? What a goofy mishtake!” That’s Iceland…

The big smart thing they did here though is making this a kind of follow up to the original story rather than remaking it as frankly that would be a bit dull and ridiculous now. And it opens up franchise possibilities as they can grab any old sci-fi and stick these characters in (the sequel will be Atlantis probably, I would have aimed “The Lost World” but whatever).

No next up teaser today as I don’t have a backlog of blogs, but it’ll probably be Taken.