DIRECTED BY: ERIC BREVIG
STARRING: BRENDAN FRASER, JOSH HUTCHERSON, ANITA BRIEM
THE fondly-remembered James Mason Journey to the Centre of the Earth opened in 1959, when Hollywood had resorted to Cinemascope, sca
ry monsters and Pat Boone songs in an attempt to lure viewers away from then-new television sets. The 2008 version opens, in 3D in selected cinemas, during a summer where studio chiefs have expressed concern as to the impact of high-profile console games on box-office figures – and so movie history repeats itself.
The ever-amiable Brendan Fraser is the college professor who, looking after his late sidekick's son (Josh Hutcherson) one weekend, finds an annotated copy of Jules Verne's novel that proposes a new way into the Earth's core. First stop Iceland, where they pick up guide/eye candy/surrogate mum Hannah (Anita Briem) – then it's time to get down, down, deeper and down.
A smarter update might have made a few environmental points to offset those soon-to-be-discarded 3D glasses, but quick, relatively inexpensive and throwaway spectacle is Brevig's brief here: it would make sense to see this Journey… in as many dimensions as possible, where the shameless gimmickry (rollercoaster mining carts, snapping piranhas) might help one overlook its dramatic flatness; as The Descent understood, there's something oppressive in being underground for any length of time. Still, there's no Pat Boone, thankfully.
The full article contains 247 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
