Note: This double-sided DVD includes the movie in three formats: a full-screen version in 2-D, a widescreen version in 2-D, and a widescreen version in 3-D. You’ll find my comments about each of the formats in the Video section below.
Journey to the Center of the Earth seems to be Hollywood’s go to novel when their running out of ideas for movies. The Jules Verne classic has been turned into several television movies as well as a couple of theatrical projects; the most notable being the 1959 outing starring Pat Boone, acting and singing.
The latest incarnation is a 3-D production of the story starring Brendan Fraser. Though the film has element of the Verne novel within the plot, it’s important to point out this version is not a film version of the novel per se. Read on and you’ll understand what I mean.
We are introduced to Professor Trevor Anderson (Brendan Fraser) as he delivers a intellectual, straight-forward lecture to bored students. He is the stereotypical academic – unassuming and completely unaware of his boyish good looks. The Professor has forgotten that his 13-year-old nephew, Sean (Josh Hutcherson), is supposed to spend ten days with him, until he gets several calls from the boy’s mother. When Sean’s mother drops him off, she leaves Trevor with a box of items that belonged to Max, Trevor’s brother and Sean’s father, who disappeared years before.
At first, Sean is more interested in Play Station and video games than Earth science experiments. That all changes when Trevor offers to tell the young boy about his father, a man he never really got the chance to know. In an effort to fully engage his nephew, Trevor pulls his father’s copy of Journey to the Center of the Earth out of the box–complete with hand-written notes in the left margin. without ever calling his mother to find out if it was alright with her, Trevor and Sean embark on a scientific expedition in search of the Holy Grail of volcanic tubes located somewhere in Iceland. Along the way they meet up with Hannah Ásgeirsson (Anita Briem) who accompanies them on their death-defying trip. Just about here, you are expected to suspend all belief and just sit back and enjoy.
One thing leads to another, and surprise, surprise, our party inadvertently stumbles into, and spirals down, an underground volcanic tube. The interminable drop prompts Trevor to shriek, “We’re still falling!” in disbelief. Eventually, the threesome ends up in the center of the Earth. Turns out, it’s kind of a nasty place; overgrown with mushrooms, man-eating fish, glow-in-the-dark birds and burnt-orange skies; all rather cheesy.
When it comes to the 3-D aspect of the film, the cheesy factor serves it well. The effects are fun and generally effective, undoubtedly bolstered by the expertise of director Eric Brevig, a visual effects supervisor whose credits include Pearl Harbor, The Day After Tomorrow and Men in Black. From a gob of spittle to a fang-bearing fish, it all jumps out at you. Subtle, it isn’t, but, then again, subtlety isn’t exactly the point with 3-D.
However, the script by Michael Weiss and Mark Levin is so flat and one dimensional, the story still falls flat. There just wasn’t much excitement here. Journey to the Center of the Earth isn’t really a bad film though. It’s a film parents can watch with their kids without fear of toilet jokes or double entendre but adults may be bored at times.
New Line provides three screen formats on a single, dual-sided disc, all three versions looking significantly different from the others. There’s a full-screen pan-and-scan affair in regular 2-D that the discriminating viewer might best forget, since it cuts off about thirty percent of the sides of the original image. There’s a 2-D, 1.85:1-ratio widescreen version that reproduces the movie’s theatrical-release dimensions. And there’s a 3-D widescreen version that also replicates the way a lot of audiences watched the movie in a motion-picture theater.
I watched about ten minutes of the pan-and-scan version, and then left that behind and watched about fifteen or twenty minutes of the 3-D version. I admit that the 3-D presentation was quite pleasing in its dimensionality and made the few minutes I stuck with it rather fun. However, I couldn’t stick with it for long because of the 3-D cardboard-and-cellophane glasses. They were just too uncomfortable to deal with for very long. I regularly wear glasses all the time, so I couldn’t find a comfortable way to wear the #-D ones for an extended period. Instead, I turned the disc over and watched the movie in regular 2-D.
In 2-D, the first thing I noticed was that the colors had an oddly pink/purple tinge to them, much as the 3-D presentation had, and they were never quite right until the very end of the movie, where they suddenly became bright and glossy; I never figured that out. In addition, the colors in 2-D look more than a bit washed out, possibly a condition of the 3-D cinematography or possibly the result of New Line’s compression, squeezing two separate versions of the movie onto one side of a disc. The second thing I noticed was that the image looked slightly blurred and soft. The filmmakers shot the movie using digital 3-D cameras, so it is possible that the lack of ultimate focus to the digital photography as well as to the collapsed 3-D processing. The disc’s video quality did not impress me in 2-D, and in 3-D it was too hard for me to watch.
The Dolby Digital 5.1 is strong and clear, and it makes dramatic use of rear speaker action for the obligatory explosions and blowing up of stuff. A Spanish audio track is available, with optional subtitles in Spanish and English for the hearing-impaired.
As mentioned above, the keepcase includes four 3-D glasses for your viewing entertainment.
An audio commentary with Fraser and director Eric Brevig is relaxed and funny. The pair obviously have a blast revisiting the picture. Also of interest A World within Our World (10:07), a wonderfully offbeat featurette chronicling the history of scientists, philosophers and religious cult leaders who claimed that the planet had a hollow core. Being Josh (6:00) gives us a day on the movie set with Josh Hutcherson, is strictly for preteens. How to Make Dinosaur Drool (2:47) is rather fun. Lastly, is Adventure at the Center of the Earth, which entails two interactive games taken from the movie: Ride the Mine Car and Bat the Fish.
