Voyage au centre de la terre

Yet again this adaptation of Jules Verne's classic has very little do with the source material and entirely goes off on a tangent!

Starring the always lovely Victoria Pratt, industry veteran Peter Fonda and a man I know only from the Whiskey Lullaby music video named Ricky Schroder.

It tells an entirely new tale with our party venturing to the center of the earth in search of someone and coming across a far smaller array of creatures, instead a lost civilization of "Natives". No Atlantis here, or for that matter much from Verne's tale.

With that Scyfy original feel and a weak script this simply isn't a very good movie, however credit has to be given in some areas.

For a start it looks great, it's some of the best cinematography I've seen lately and it does the movie a world of good. Though the film is low on creature effects the ones it does use are better than you'd expect due to clever use of shading, blurring and filters. What I'm trying to say is the sfx aren't great, but they've done a really good job hiding that fact.

Visually this version is a treat, for entertainment value it's more than slightly lacking.

The Good:

Some wonderful cinematography

Victoria Pratt

Beautiful settings

Time appropriate

The Bad:

Not exactly loyal to the source material

Rather dull

Despite its name, the movie has a very low sci-fi feel to it. I felt I was watching something more akin to a western travel adventure than anything else. Outside of that, it was pretty innocent and mild - like a low-budget family movie. Nothing great here.

Basically, this is a story about a wealthy lady who enlists the help of an anthropologist to help find her missing husband. He was on a quest to find a passage into the earth - but hasn't been heard from in 4 years. With the help of two other men, they try to retrace her husband's path.

Although there is no suspense, thrill or anything like that, the movie has a pleasant tone to it that almost makes it an "OK" way to pass 2 hours. However, unless you're looking for something to watch while you fall asleep, pass on this.

I Loved the original version in 1959 with James Mason and, since movie making has had 50 years to improve, I guess that I was expecting So Very Much More. Phew! This movie was a terrible let down. Maybe if I would have seen it on the big screen I could have given it a 3....maybe. Unfortunately, I had to watch it on TV with a commercial every 10 minutes. There is No Doubt in my mind that I would have turned it off after the 1st 10 minutes except for the fact that I was editing out the commercials for a friend of mine so that she could watch it when she got home.

I'd say that if you Love soap opera's and you are addicted to the 'Lifetime' channel, than give it a spin. However, if you are more in tune to good movie making(story, plot, acting, etc), than avoid this nonsense like the plague.

Really disappointed with the movie after all the hype about being a remake of Journey To The Center Of The Earth. I thought with all the modern technology in movie making, it would have a lot more flash than the original. But the original with Pat Boone is still the best. I watched this new movie until the end but after wards, I thought maybe this was part one since I was still waiting for them to get to the center of Earth!! Maybe this is the start of a series??? Anyways, on top of that, ION 38 kept popping up promos for their other shows at the bottom of the screen throughout the movie. That made the movie even worse.

Here we have yet another film adaptation of the popular Jules Verne's novel "Journey to the Center of the Earth". Here, the cast is led by Rick Schroeder as it again tells of explorers finding a passage into the core of the planet where dinosaurs, primitive people, and a whole lost world still exist. I am not that familiar with the novel or many of the movies based upon it, but this 2008 version is a poor adaptation. There were many things I had to complain about it and few to compliment about it. Performances were good, but just about everything else fell short of expectations.

The best part of the movie, believe it or not, was not while the characters were in the center of the Earth. Rather, it was while they were on the surface and even then, it wasn't that entertaining. I strongly felt the cinematography was too bright and gave the movie a feeling of schlock and no authenticity. The screenplay was rather poor, unorganized, and many scenes had little or no point. Such as this part where a bear allegedly attacks the characters and scares away the horses. We see the characters shooting, hear a bear growling, and that's all. Special effects weren't that great either. For dinosaurs, we see giant birds (not pterodactyls) and a plesiosaurus. Both were achieved with rather shoddy computer graphics. The creatures took up very little of the film and created no sense of marvel or majesty about themselves, which is what one wants to see in a movie like this. A lost world should be treated with majesty and magnificence.

Bottom line, the 2008 film adaptation of "Journey to the Center of the Earth" was a very bland uninteresting film that took its time at developing itself and made very little sense. I suppose it is worth looking at once, but I'm in no itching hurry to view it a second time.