‘Journey to the Center of the Earth’: A wild ride
What I like so much about “Journey to the Center of the Earth” isn’t the 3-D, although I can’t tell you how much the 3-D glasses and the process itself have improved since the days when people watched movies like “House of Wax” (most people’s favorite 3-D junk), “Bwana Devil” and “Phantom of the Rue Morgue” (my personal favorite — for the scare that comes when the dead body stuffed up the chimney suddenly descends into living room view).
JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH
Three stars (Out of four)
RATING: PG for intense scares
RUNNING TIME: 87 minutes
DIRECTOR: Eric Brevig
Brendan Fraser, Josh Hutcherson and Anita Briem star in newest version of Jules Verne’s tale of a scientist who finds an ocean and creatures galore at the Earth’s core.
Nor is it “Journey” star Brendan Fraser, an amiable slab of Canadian bacon who’s good in these things because he can convey a maximum of “gee whiz!” while keeping a satiric twinkle in his eye. The movie hereby begins a mini-Fraserfest at your local megaplex. His newest “Mummy” CGI extravaganza opens Aug. 1.
No, what I like so much about “Journey to the Center of the Earth” is how science-friendly it is for kids. I can picture the 8-or 9-year-old version of myself and my friends seeing this thing and raptly learning how geysers work and how flammable magnesium is and how worrisome it would be to be chased over a thin sheet of muscovite by a huge Tyrannosaurus Rex. This is the kind of movie a kid might see and immediately ask Mom and Dad for a good compass (you never know, after all, when you’ll be lost wandering around the Earth’s core, though the movie, I must say, makes it clear that down there where the lost boy is, you have to read South for North and North for South).
Kids of a certain age are natural science students. As long as you keep everything on the “wait until you hear how cool this is” level, you can soak all sorts of elementary facts about geology, paleontology, zoology, etc., into their gloriously spongey noggins, and it’s all to the good. They haven’t yet succumbed to our culture’s narcissistic notions that all excess knowledge is for dweebs and history is a bore because how important could anything be that happened before you were born?
Many decades before this film’s audience was even a wink or a tickle, 3-D was a ridiculously cheesey gimmick. Now, with new technology, it’s still a gimmick, but there’s a lot less fromage involved, however ridiculous.
So here are a few things that the 3-D “Journey to the Center of the Earth” throws at the camera so that you get them in your face (really in your face): the feelers of a small beetle, a lot of gross spittle from a Tyrannosaurus Rex, Fraser’s toothpaste-laced spit as he finishes brushing his teeth (with a 3-D camera in the drain), a Yo-Yo, some rubber balls, dandelion dander, large carnivorous plants and flying prehistoric fish with teeth the size of switchblades.
When Jules Verne’s sci-fi classic was first made into a movie in 1957, the less-than-majestic director Henry Levin was in charge and James Mason was caught in the act of earning a living in a movie that co-starred Pat Boone and Arlene Dahl (in a few short years, Stanley Kubrick would hand Mason back his major career in the first movie version of “Lolita”).
The way this movie has it, there’s a cult of “Vernians” that think Verne’s novels are revealed truth. One of them was the brother of the scientist played by Fraser as a kind of beefy Indiana Jones sans Fedora. Another is the Icelandic father of the mountain guide played by gorgeous Anita Briem, a Nordic goddess who’s got to be the coolest guide any mountain ever had (as well as a nicely bold and ultra-competent role model for young female members of the audience).
Somehow the two, and the scientist’s nephew (Josh Hutcherson) who’s also along for the ride (don’t ask), wind up in the center of the Earth, proving the validity of cockamamie theories and giving the scientist lots of Mr. Wizard opportunities to explain some morsels of Science for Dummies to his fellow cast members and the audience.
In short: It’s fun. And, to be sure, it’s geology, climatology and paleontology lite.
But here, I tell you, is a movie that you won’t mind being full of schist.•
