Viagem ao Centro da Terra: O Filme

I was not dreading watching Journey To The Center Of The Earth, but at the same time I was not thinking it was going to be the best movie ever either. I was simply ready to be entertained. Well, when it started up, I immediately became interested, because it looked enjoyable and entertaining and I was being fair on it, no matter how much it was against my nature to try and bash it.

After awhile, as the movie continued on, I got a little restless, and at points flat out bored and uninterested. It was a good movie, but a lot of things were just unneeded and uninteresting, and also they tried to hard to make a cool, awesome, totally tricked out film when they should have focused a little bit more on plot and character structure. (They tried to hard to please the audience, as far as I could tell.) The performances were decent enough, I should add, as well.

Well, overall, it was a nice, enjoyable film, but it is nothing that I would just praise down to the very core of the film, or really care to watch again, because there is not much that absolutely "wows" you throughout the movie, but it entertained, and there were some pretty cool action scenes I guess. Watch with an open mind.

It's been ten years since professor Trevor Anderson (Brendan Fraser)'s brother Max been missing. The university is about to clear Max's lab for storage. His nephew Sean (Josh Hutcherson) is spending 10 days with him while Sean's mother is preparing to move to Canada. Trevor is given a box of Max's stuff. There he finds the Jules Verne book 'A Journey to the Center of the Earth' which Trevor and Sean follow in the track of Max. Once in Iceland, they find Hannah (Anita Briem) who is the daughter of a deceased scientist. Max and the dead scientist both believe in the reality of Jules Verne's book. So Hannah, Sean, and Trevor follow the trail to an unbelievable underground world.

Forget about the science, this is a simple fantasy amusement park ride. Brendan Fraser is the same guy as 'The Mummy'. He's still that charming nice guy. Josh Hutcherson is pretty good, but Anita Briem is kind of cold. Chemistry isn't that necessary. It's a great fun ride nonetheless.

Plain and simple: this is a kids' movie. If you're an adult and you saw the previews with some genuinely-scary looking scenes and thought, "Wow, this looks cool" - be warned. Some of it is cool, but most of it isn't.

Most of it is Brendan Franser doing his "George Of the Jungle" routing of yelling and screaming, either trying to find this teen kid or in terror as he falling for being chased by something. In fact, the last half hour of this film will give you headache with all the yelling by all three major parties.

I didn't realize this film was out in 3-D. I saw it on a regular DVD and the special-effects, in 2-D obviously, looked so cheesy. Some of these scenes looked like they were right out of the Tarzan movies of the 1930s with the obvious screen in the background and the actors on a stage in front of it. So, see this 3-D, if possible, otherwise expect it took look pretty bad.

Teen girls in the audience will like Josh Hutcherson ("Sean"), a handsome young kid who looks ad sounds good, until he gets excited and his voice cracks. Ah, the joys of puberty. Meanwhile, teen boys will get an eyeful with Anita Briem ("Hannah"), a very attractive new face. Actually, Anita has a lot of credibility in this role, playing a character living in Iceland who, in real life, was born and raised in Iceland before moving to England at the age of 16.

As for the story, it's a re-make of the famous Jules Verne story about discovering a whole new world (without people) in the center of the earth, complete with amazing birds and frightening animals and fish. Despite the dumbness of the dialog, the first hour was watchable. As with many adventure stories, though, it gets totally carried in the final third of the film.

In all, the movie is fairly entertaining to the degree that adults wouldn't be bored if they took their kids. It's not really offensive except for one stupid play-on-words which is totally unnecessary. Other than that, this is a very clean film safe for kids of most age. There are parts, however, that are way too scary for the real young ones.

A scientist(Brendan Fraser, also producer) and his niece (Josh Hutcherson) undergo an hazardous voyage to find clues of his father, along the way they face numerous dangers and risks. During the trip, the scientific and his niece hire a wealthy scout (Anita Briem) to find the father who disappeared several years earlier during an expedition to a center of the earth at Iceland. The trio descend into deep caverns and discover a tunnel-rail system leading to the planet's center. They have to deal with lightning storms, endure torrential floods, volcanic eruptions, prehistoric animals and discover a forest of giant mushrooms, but not the lost city of Atlantis as happens in the classic novel.

This spectacular adaptation is a special version of the Jules Verne adventure yarn . There're rip-roaring action, spirit of adventure, derring-do, thrills and results to be pretty entertaining. It's a great fun with nice special effects , breathtaking set decoration and impressive art direction but with excessive use of computer generator. Lavish utilization of 3D cinematography and superb, imaginative soundtrack . Highlights of the voyage includes a roller-coaster trip, strong storms, magnetic rocks, a terrifying odyssey in sailing, prehistoric reptile, a Tiranosaurius Rex, and many others.

Other renditions about this know story are the following : Classic version (1959) by Henry Levin with James Mason as Lindenbrook, Pat Boone,Diane Baker and Arlene Dahl; Spanish version by Juan Piquer with Kenneth Moore, and TV adaptation by George Miller with Treat Williams, Jeremy London and Bryan Brown.

This film tries to adapt to the cinema the sci-fi novel "Journey to the Center of the Earth" by Jules Verne. Book and author are even abundantly referred in the film. However, it creates a new story around the book that is a far cry from what was written by Verne. To begin with, this film doesn't happen in the nineteenth century but rather during our time and the original novel was about a scientific expedition into a volcano, not an occasional incident that runs by chance. The script is pretty basic and far-fetched, runs over science in favor of dramatic effect and abuses the usual clichés of adventure movies, with poorly constructed and undeveloped characters escaping from certain death always at the last moment. There is a lot of silly stuff in this movie and it harms it's quality. The film has a nice cinematography and the fast pace that it takes, along with its short lenght, helps to make it more enjoyable because we forget mistakes and failures that we would be thinking about, focusing on what is happening.

About the actors I can only say that the cast is regular, tries hard but doesn't have much quality material on which to show talent. Brendan Fraser is the sounding name here, but it doesn't surprise the audience. His character is similar to what he had in "The Mummy", reason why it doesn't require a major effort of the actor, whose career fell into the doldrums after his sudden success. Anita Briem is a perfect stranger to me but plays the hot girl contested by the good guys while Josh Hutcherson is the revolted teenager.

In short, this movie is the typical adventure movie in which nothing is credible but makes the public have fun, with appropriate doses of humor and action, some silly romance and a forgettable story. Worth watching if you just want some quick entertainment.