The House Next Door

By Keith Uhlich

[Journey to the Center of the Earth opens wide today. 3-D in select theaters.]

As 90-minute demonstrations of new technologies go, Journey to the Center of the Earth passes by with relative ease and painlessness. It's an excuse (a showcase for the Real D Digital 3D process) made summer movie flesh, one that opens with Brendan Fraser spitting toothpaste water directly into our faces and which then tools all of its subsequent cliffhanger actions, grotesque creatures, and slivers of characters to its fourth-wall breaking purposes. The only true moment of poetry comes when young Sean Anderson (Josh Hutcherson), nephew to Fraser's absent-minded seismic studies professor Trevor Anderson, is forced to cross a makeshift bridge of floating magnetic rocks. Stretching across an abyss, narrowing from a vast field to a single, precarious outcropping, these are the only objects that seem to possess any real weight in the world-within-a-world that our three heroes—Trevor, Sean, and yowza-wowza guide Hannah Asgeirsson (Anita Briem)—fall into one cold and stormy Nordic day.

The 66 Degrees North outerwear that they prominently sport (great clothing line, by the way) is quickly shed as they descend further and further toward our planet's molten core, though their sweat glands, hair products (Aveda, perhaps?), and age-defying makeup remain blissfully unaffected, even as the temperature soars past 100 and a drooling T-Rex comes a-galloping.
___________________________________________
To read the rest of the review at UnderGroundOnline (UGO), click here.