Journey to the Center of the Earth

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

A half-baked remake of the 1959 classic, and it lacks one rather important feature -- an actual journey to the Center of the Earth! Instead, the viewer is treated to a world within a world (the Earth is hollow -- who'd have guessed?!?) where there is a sky and actual sunlight (how else would vegetation grow?? the bigger question is: how does a star exist within the center of the Earth and not burn it to cinders?) The actors are passable, not good. The characters are foolish: the main female character decides to take a swim in a lake.Nobody bothers to tell her "Strange world, stay on the land." (A lake, one asks?? Yes, if there's sunlight, how could there not be lake? If one must be stupid, well then, lets be completely stupid.A good point: the only consistency in the movie is stupidity, so go with the flow, must have been the thinking. If they'd thought less, it might have gotten better.) Then,throw in to the mix, the usual "savages," indigenous to this world and an us vs. the savages ending and you have nothing out of the normal. Oh, by the way, everyone talks in 20th century English, as usual, although it's the 19th century. Writers lack any sense of the speech of different eras, common in writers under the age of 30. Watch. Snooze.

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.

It's always difficult for me to watch a movie after having read the book it's allegedly based upon. Anyways, I decided to try this one, and I have to say I can't find any part of it that'd be based on the Jules Verne novel (except the title, of course). It's amazing to see how professor Otto Lidenbrock from Hamburg became Jonathan Brock, his nephew Axel became Abel, how his Danish guide Hans Bjelke morphed into Sergei Petrov, and how the expedition that originally started in ICELAND at the end of June, suddenly changed to Alaska in September. But most important is the complete lack of respect for the original plot and its characters, to the point that the movie shares nothing with the book they say it follows. I do understand that most books can not be adapted faithfully to the screen, but there's a difference between taking a few creative licences and making a completely different story. So, I'd like to ask Mr. William Gray to, PLEASE, read the book before saying his script is based upon it, or otherwise take the credits (and responsibilities) of signing his own stories.

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.