As a movie, Journey to the Center of the Earth isn't much more than a feel-good adventure emphasizing the importance of family, an encyclopedic knowledge of geology and chemistry and loads of good old-fashioned luck. But as a visit to cinema's third dimension, it's a thrill ride not to be missed.
One of the first entries in what promises to be a spate of 3-D movies to be released over the next few years, Journey is at once a throwback to the extra-dimensional films of old - when directors concentrated on making sure that their characters threw lots of stuff at the camera, the better to get a rise out of the audience - and a showcase for new technology that both heightens the effect and makes the movies easier to watch.
Brendan Fraser, in one of those generic Everyman performances that are becoming his specialty, is Trevor Anderson, an academic geologist about to get his tenure yanked out from under him. Desperate, he scours his brain and archives for something to prove how valuable he is to the university. Just when he despairs of ever finding such proof, up pops his malcontent nephew Sean (Josh Hutcherson) for a visit
Sean's in a bit of a teen funk, perhaps in part because his explorer dad vanished years ago, and his mom hopes Uncle Trevor will be the man to shake him out of it. Instead, the two feed off each other's funks, until a book shows up that used to belong to Sean's dad - a book that apparently offers a convenient road map to the Earth's core, accessible via an Icelandic volcano.
So off they go exploring, picking up a handy and resilient and beautiful guide on the way, Hannah (Anita Bream, briefly seen in Showtime's The Tudors as Jane Seymour, third wife of Henry VIII). Turns out the map is pretty good, too - which is lucky for them, since it makes the title trek possible, and for us, since it affords the movie all sorts of extra-dimensional possibilities.
First-time director Eric Brevig, who cut his teeth as a visual-effects supervisor on such films as Total Recall, Men in Black and The Day After Tomorrow, tries using the 3-D technique to immerse his audience in the film and make them feel as if they're right there in the midst of the journey. The effort's only partially successful; while the 3-D effect adds depth and enables certain objects to seemingly escape the plane of the film (especially a flock of magical glowbirds that will most likely find their way under some Christmas trees this year), there remains the problem of the self-limiting movie screen to conquer. Everything still happens within the limiting rectangle of the screen, which keeps jarring the viewer back to the inescapable unreality of the movie-going experience. If only 3-D could somehow be married to Cinerama, a '60s-vintage process that used a wraparound screen to virtually embrace the audience within the film frame. Now that in 3-D would really be something.
