Journey to the Center of the Earth (1999)
Remake of Jules Verne's classic story finds adventurers seeking a mysterious hidden land. They are joined by the wife of another man, who had previously gone on a similar expedition and disappeared.
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I purchased this DVD in the Walmart bargain bin, it was bundled with a free copy of the 2005 TV movie "Jules Verne's Mysterious Island" starring Rene Mac Lachian. This made for TV movie (JTTCOTE) does have some decent special effects but the story line takes too many liberties and detracts from the original Verne novel. It's a mediocre watch but the special effects makes it somewhat palatable. The acting is above average with Jeremy London (JONAS LYTTON) putting forth the best performance of all the actors. All in all it's something to watch on a rainy day when you want to watch a science fiction movie with better then average special effects.
This is a grab bag of elements of the Verne story filled out with various Rice Burroughs staples: fights, captures and escapes surrounding a patriarchal tribe whose men dress caveman-style and whose flawlessly-complexioned women wear little leather skirts and bikini tops; Amazon warriors; humanoid lizards; and a seasoning of dinosaurs. The whole thing is given a weird gloss by filtering out greens - presumably a cheap way to get the blue-foliage jungles - so the whole thing is in a blue/brown/red palette. I sort of enjoyed it; but being in hospital the day after an appendix operation, I guess I wasn't in a critically demanding mood.
This film was just an ego-trip for evolutionists, allowing them to bring across that they teach 'the truth' and that everyone else is wrong. They try to do it in a way that is subtle, hoping that it won't be so offensive that way, but it still is.Even without this, the film is bad bad bad. The story-line and acting are nothing short of pathetic, especially the chick who falls in love with Treat; did they pick her up from the streets or something? If you want to see a good TV film, watch Jason and the Argonauts instead; Jason is much better than his brother Jeremy.
This one is an unimpressive adaptation of one of the most important novels of Jules Verne known as the writer who creates science fiction as a literary genre (in fact, Journey to the Center of the Earth is credited by Arthur C. Clarke as the best novel of Verne). This version have some good special effects but lacks impact and originality. If you want to see a better view of the same novel, see the version with James Mason instead. I give this a 4 (four).