Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008)

The father/son Halmi producers strike again with another made for cable effort that fails to entertain. I could live with the fact that this version of the classic Jules Verne tale only takes a few minor elements from the novel, choosing instead to do its own thing for the most part. But accurate to the novel or not, it seems that the Halmi's ambitions were too lofty for the obviously limited budget. There are a number of clear cost-cutting measures here, ranging from a bear attack where we never see the bear, to sudden jumps in the narrative that result in key linking footage seemingly missing. But the biggest problem is that the movie is pretty dull for the most part. It takes about 45% of the movie before the protagonists start descending into the bowels of the earth. And once they do, the level of excitement doesn't increase all that much despite some action sequences. There is some nice British Columbian scenery, and it's always nice to see Peter Fonda (though he seems to be phoning in his performance), and there is some unintentional amusement to see Ricky Schroder so badly miscast. But despite those things, the movie will most likely have you reaching for your remote to change the channel long before it reaches the end credits.

Veteran television director T.J. Scott's made-for-cable spin on Jules Verne's venerable crackpot classic "Journey to the Center of the Earth" qualifies as lackluster juvenile nonsense. Apart from the use of Verne's name, the title of his novel, its 19th century setting, and some isolated incidents from the text, including an encounter with dinosaurs, this movie shares little in common with Verne's text. This version relocates the action to Alaska in the 1870s so that it initially looks like a hybrid western. No, The protagonist, a financially strapped San Francisco-based archaeologist Jonathan Brock (Ricky Schroder of "N.Y.P.D. Blue"), proves he is no armchair academician. The first time we lay eyes on Brock, he is slugging it out with an opponent in a bare-knuckles boxing match. As it turns out, this is how Brock raises money to fund his expeditions. Whenever actor Ricky Schroder gets near a boxing ring, you cannot help but remember one of his early and most memorable roles as a kid who hung out with a championship boxer in "The Champ." Jules Verne's protagonist, German-b0rn Professor Liedenbrock, was nothing like Brock. Liedenbrock was a professor of, as Verne wrote, "chemistry, geology, mineralogy, and many other ologies." Once he triumphs over his knuckle-headed adversary, Brock and his young nephew, Abel (Steven Grayhm) who dreams of life as a journalist, return home. A wealthy, blonde, heiress Martha Dennison (Victoria Pratt) approaches Brock about a proposition. She has been trying to locate her missing husband, Edward Dennison (Peter Fonda of "Easy Rider"), who vanished about four years ago searching for a passage to the center of the earth. Actually, Dennison discovered a passage through an abandoned mine, though Brock believes that no such mine exists. In any case, in Verne's tale, no woman like Martha approaches Liedenbrock about a rescue mission to the center of the Earth. Martha offers to fund his expedition to East Indies if he will help her find her husband because the two men think alike. "I'm no detective," Brock point out. "I'm a scientist." Martha retorts, "I'm looking for a man who can put himself in Edward's place, an adventurer who can think, strategize, and execute a plan as he would. A man who can discover and follow the trail he would have taken." Our heroes travel by ship to Alaska, ride like hell over rugged terrain, climb a lot of ropes, and waggle their jawbones. Eventually, they reach a point where they have to calculate how to enter the Earth's crust to access the interior world. Scott and writers Thomas "The Manhattan Project" Baum and William "Prom Night" Gray stage a scene where our heroes arrive at their destination punctually in ten days time to determine where the sun's rays penetrate the Earth so that they can locate the hidden mine shaft. This serves as their point of departure for the center of the earth. They emerge near a lake at the base of a volcano. Martha goes skinny dipping while the three guys are away, and she gets the crap scared out of her when something underwater touches her. Jonathan, Abel, and their guide—a Czarist refugee Russian called Sergei Petkov (Michael Dopud of "The Pathfinder") who had earlier saved Brock's life— fabricate a raft out of timber left-over from Dennison's expedition. The best part of this lowbrow thriller occurs on the lake when a prehistoric serpent appears in several shots and some of the worse looking prehistoric birds are there, too. There is a good shot of the serpent from the bottom of the lake looking up at the raft that our heroes are sailing. Unfortunately, unlike Verne's tale, the producers couldn't afford a second prehistoric creature so that they could replicate the fight in Chapter 30 of Verne's novel.Essentially, Dennison's story resembles Rudyard Kipling's tale "The Man Who Would Be King" where two Englishmen enthroned themselves as monarchs until one bled and the villagers executed him and exiled the second. Dennison rules a tribe of Native American Indian types that rely on bows and arrows. These people have migrated to the center of the Earth. The finale with our heroes fleeing from fierce Native American-like primitives is ho-hum. It seems that Dennison rigged up a trolley system of ropes in the trees, and our heroes and heroine slide down these ropes ahead of the pursuing redskins on hand-clinched trolleys. Scott never conjures up any suspense because you know that Brock, Martha, Abel, and Sergei are going to survive the myriad perils. The most surprisingly scene occurs when Dennison shoots a warrior in the head in the manner of an execution. A furious Martha strikes Edward for killing the warrior in cold blood and the sight of blood turns Edward's people against him and forces our heroes to flee for their lives. Earlier, Dennison's wife Martha and Brock squabble about a variety of things, while Abel—maintaining a journal of their experiences—hints at the romance burgeoning between them. At one point, Martha explains that she was been married to Edward for a year. Edward has little use for her when they reunite at the center of the earth. Once they escape from the center of the Earth, Martha—Liedenbrock's housekeeper in Verne's novel had the same name—wants to accompany him on further adventures.Scott's version of "Journey to the Center of the Earth" is strictly disposable. Peter Fonda isn't worth the wait and his character—like the rest of the characters—are far from memorable. The Canadian scenery lends some splendor to our heroes' shenanigans, but the shoe-string budget often undermines the film's epic quality. Lenser Philip Linzy's cinematography is the best thing about this execrable adventure.

I Loved the original version in 1959 with James Mason and, since movie making has had 50 years to improve, I guess that I was expecting So Very Much More. Phew! This movie was a terrible let down. Maybe if I would have seen it on the big screen I could have given it a 3....maybe. Unfortunately, I had to watch it on TV with a commercial every 10 minutes. There is No Doubt in my mind that I would have turned it off after the 1st 10 minutes except for the fact that I was editing out the commercials for a friend of mine so that she could watch it when she got home.I'd say that if you Love soap opera's and you are addicted to the 'Lifetime' channel, than give it a spin. However, if you are more in tune to good movie making(story, plot, acting, etc), than avoid this nonsense like the plague.

A half-baked remake of the 1959 classic, and it lacks one rather important feature -- an actual journey to the Center of the Earth! Instead, the viewer is treated to a world within a world (the Earth is hollow -- who'd have guessed?!?) where there is a sky and actual sunlight (how else would vegetation grow?? the bigger question is: how does a star exist within the center of the Earth and not burn it to cinders?) The actors are passable, not good. The characters are foolish: the main female character decides to take a swim in a lake.Nobody bothers to tell her "Strange world, stay on the land." (A lake, one asks?? Yes, if there's sunlight, how could there not be lake? If one must be stupid, well then, lets be completely stupid.A good point: the only consistency in the movie is stupidity, so go with the flow, must have been the thinking. If they'd thought less, it might have gotten better.) Then,throw in to the mix, the usual "savages," indigenous to this world and an us vs. the savages ending and you have nothing out of the normal. Oh, by the way, everyone talks in 20th century English, as usual, although it's the 19th century. Writers lack any sense of the speech of different eras, common in writers under the age of 30. Watch. Snooze.