Eric Brevig's Journey to the Center of the Earth would play great at a drive-in, if drive-ins still existed.
Characters wave tape measures at the screen for no understanding other than to reach an audience bob and weave. Goofy Brendan Fraser spits toothpaste in our general direction. Fanged fish leap into our virtual laps. When a yo-yo springs from Josh Hutcherson's hands, we jump in our seats.
It's recommended you journey to a dramatic art with 3-D capabilities if you're pickings the class to determine Journey. Though available everywhere in the standard, unremarkable, two-dimensional presentation (read: flat as a board and about as interesting), Journey makes splendid use of modern 3-D technology and actually harkens back to campy science fiction of the 1950s.
Geologist Trevor Anderson (Fraser) and his nephew Sean (Hutcherson) take after clues left hand in a tattered copy of Jules Verne's novel Journey to the Center of the Earth that they leslie Townes Hope will lead them to Sean's missing father, Max (Jean Michael Pare). Their mission transports them to Iceland, where adorable mountain climber Hannah (Anita Briem) pilots them to a volcanic tubing that carries them... well, you've register the title, so you get the idea.
Journey makes about as much sense as a National Treasure film and moves as rapidly. For a film that joyfully apes Steven Spielberg -- with rampaging dinosaurs, hurtling mine cars, and a distracting father-son complex -- Journey actually equals this summer's Indiana Jones sequel on the assembly line of escalating dangers.
The wondrous calamity is obvious, trusted, but astonishingly effective. On normal screens, though, Journey will miss its added visual property (pun intended), and subtract most of its fun.
It's awfully lactating down there.
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