Journey to the Center of the Earth

Here we have yet another film adaptation of the popular Jules Verne's novel "Journey to the Center of the Earth". Here, the cast is led by Rick Schroeder as it again tells of explorers finding a passage into the core of the planet where dinosaurs, primitive people, and a whole lost world still exist. I am not that familiar with the novel or many of the movies based upon it, but this 2008 version is a poor adaptation. There were many things I had to complain about it and few to compliment about it. Performances were good, but just about everything else fell short of expectations.

The best part of the movie, believe it or not, was not while the characters were in the center of the Earth. Rather, it was while they were on the surface and even then, it wasn't that entertaining. I strongly felt the cinematography was too bright and gave the movie a feeling of schlock and no authenticity. The screenplay was rather poor, unorganized, and many scenes had little or no point. Such as this part where a bear allegedly attacks the characters and scares away the horses. We see the characters shooting, hear a bear growling, and that's all. Special effects weren't that great either. For dinosaurs, we see giant birds (not pterodactyls) and a plesiosaurus. Both were achieved with rather shoddy computer graphics. The creatures took up very little of the film and created no sense of marvel or majesty about themselves, which is what one wants to see in a movie like this. A lost world should be treated with majesty and magnificence.

Bottom line, the 2008 film adaptation of "Journey to the Center of the Earth" was a very bland uninteresting film that took its time at developing itself and made very little sense. I suppose it is worth looking at once, but I'm in no itching hurry to view it a second time.