Journey to the Center of the Earth

I was sick in bed and needed something to watch. This made me sicker.

Some of the very worst acting and script I have ever seen. Your time would be better spent watching paint dry.

The plot makes no sense.

The special effects were the least special I have ever seen.

This is a waste of my time writing this review, but I have to write enough to save some other poor sole from having to endure the fiasco of a movie.

It starts with an all girl team of soldiers with no explanation of why there are no men. I suspect it was hard finding men to appear in this movie. One of the girls thinks they will not be taken seriously by people at the destination if they are not in full battle gear. This is the only line in the movie that makes sense.

The 'science' in this movie would have been okay in the 1960s. I wonder if they actually had any technical advisors.

The only good thing about this movie was the fact that it passed the Bechdel Test , which is difficult to find, especially in Sci-fi. Pity it was so badly done.

I don't usually post... but had to on this one. I'm guessing the marketing pitch went something like this, "Okay... we release this piece of roughly cobbled together footage from the cut-room floor from an old sci-fi flick that was killed for good reason 20 years ago at the exact same time as Brenden Frazier's 'Journey to the Center of the Earth in 3-D', call it by the exact same name and hope nobody notices. Who wants in?!" My wife kept jokingly asking, "Is this a 'Sweded' version of a 'real' movie?" (see "Be Kind, Rewind" for concept of "Sweding"). Honestly. An all female combat unit who is neither on a combat mission nor behave like soldiers. Poor whip-cams and badly edited cut scenes. Special "ship effects" that have repeat-cells (remember Scooby-Doo cartoons? Remember how the background kept "repeating" when the gang would run down a hallway). Horrific dialogue, audio mixing (it was like watching old Kung-Fu movies... lip flaps don't match the dialogue... crap, the Japanese Anime we watch does a better job than THIS movie did!), acting, direction, photography...honestly, the only thing even remotely redeeming was the lame attempt to give Homage to Aliens (pirated dialogue "Hey... you look just like i feel...", an easily identifiable "Hudson", and even a gratuitous "chest bursting" concept), which would have been mildly funny if it wasn't attempting to take itself seriously.

By every account this is a terribly bad movie. Why do I give it so many stars (well, 4 out 10)? Because the cheese factor kind of works in it's favor ... for me. It's got some sort of sick charm that appeals to 1 out of every 50 people and I guess I'm that 1 person.

Given that in 2008, 2 other Journey to the Center of the Earth movies were made (one Theatrical, one for the Hallmark TV channel) ... what spin could this one take? An all-female cast for starters (well, there is one slightly older middle-aged guy present, but he doesn't count), and teleportation to add a little novelty.

Here's the setup: a military team of women are using a relatively new teleportation machine to zip over to Germany. Their path takes them through the center of the Earth (well, only 600km deep) ... and something goes wrong and they get stuck in said location. The hot female scientist who designed the machine is now just finished work on a nuclear-powered, laser-blasting deep digging machine. This is what's used to rescue the lost women.

Part of the cheese factor for me is that in spite of a low budget, ridiculous cast and idea and clear special effects goofs (I don't think we're meant to see clouds underground) ... everyone in the movie tries to be serious. The result is a kind of offbeat amusement. In fact, I'm actually pretty impressed that the film makers didn't go the "T&A" route; the girl with the lip-ring in the beginning almost gets you thinking otherwise.

Anyway, I do not recommend watching this movie. However, if you believe that you may happen to like knucklehead adaptations of "Journey to the ..." movies, then by all means check it out. I kind of liked it.

I usually get irritated when people give up on a film after less than a handful of minutes. Many a film will take a while to cook and a lot of hidden gems have been missed because people gave up on them too early.

It could well be that 'Journey...' will be that film for me. It was awful and I gave in after about ten minutes. And that includes time for the credits.

The camera work was poor, the acting was like a school play and the dialogue made day time soaps seem like Shakespeare.

I know actors have to pay bills, but they should at least do a decent day's work.

Fortunately I rented this, so it didn't hurt the bank too much and I got to hand it back.

AVOID !!!!