Watch Journey to the Center of the Earth For Free

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

A few years ago my mom borrowed this movie from the library claiming that it was entertaining. It is not. Do not watch this movie. It is terrible. Characters - I have no clue if there were actually characters in this movie. A more accurate description would be "a couple of people were asked to read lines, and walk across poorly designed greenscreens in an effort to get people to call them actors." Take it from me, no one on the cast of this movie cared enough to even attempt a convincing performance. The script was pretty bad, but still. Plot - This movie is mostly boring filler. There is a plot, but there are no stakes to it and it doesn't help that most of the human beings shown onscreen are too dumb to breathe. Sights and Sounds - Nothing in this movie that doesn't take place on the surface looks real - and even then there is still some unconvincing CG above ground. Maybe this movie looked good in theaters - I don't know - but most people aren't going to see this movie in theaters seeing as how this movie was released 10 years ago (more depending on when you're reading this review). If the only thing that your movie has to offer is that it looks kinda cool in 3D on a big screen, then you have failed. The sound mixing is also pretty bad. Message - True, I might not have been paying too much attention by the end (the only reason I watch this movie all the way through was because I was bribed) but I'm pretty sure the end message was that lying and stealing is good. The "protagonists" lie and steal all throughout the movie, and in the end they come out on top. Great message for the kids to learn.

This film tries to adapt to the cinema the sci-fi novel "Journey to the Center of the Earth" by Jules Verne. Book and author are even abundantly referred in the film. However, it creates a new story around the book that is a far cry from what was written by Verne. To begin with, this film doesn't happen in the nineteenth century but rather during our time and the original novel was about a scientific expedition into a volcano, not an occasional incident that runs by chance. The script is pretty basic and far-fetched, runs over science in favor of dramatic effect and abuses the usual clichés of adventure movies, with poorly constructed and undeveloped characters escaping from certain death always at the last moment. There is a lot of silly stuff in this movie and it harms it's quality. The film has a nice cinematography and the fast pace that it takes, along with its short lenght, helps to make it more enjoyable because we forget mistakes and failures that we would be thinking about, focusing on what is happening.About the actors I can only say that the cast is regular, tries hard but doesn't have much quality material on which to show talent. Brendan Fraser is the sounding name here, but it doesn't surprise the audience. His character is similar to what he had in "The Mummy", reason why it doesn't require a major effort of the actor, whose career fell into the doldrums after his sudden success. Anita Briem is a perfect stranger to me but plays the hot girl contested by the good guys while Josh Hutcherson is the revolted teenager.In short, this movie is the typical adventure movie in which nothing is credible but makes the public have fun, with appropriate doses of humor and action, some silly romance and a forgettable story. Worth watching if you just want some quick entertainment.

Its Jules Verne and I remember having some very positive experiences with him at a very young age. So it has that going for it even if its not really the Jules Verne story, at least not in anything but name and concept.When I was little there was a made-for-TV movie that looked like it was intended to start a series that never happened and all the kids on the block ate it up.Unfortunately the made-for-TV movie was better.This version suffers from the same failure that Beowulf did....it was just too much.They toned it down a bit with the 3D, there were scenes that gave the viewer a break, albeit a short break.The problem is that once the action hit, once the story started to move along the 3D was too much and too constant.I remember vividly when they first arrived in Iceland....and that's about it.Afterwards I just remember all the 3D being too much and too CGI and in the end, I forgot I was watching a movie. They bombarded the audience with too much and, yes, it looked cool, but does that even matter when, in the end, you are too distracted to remember you paid for a movie, and somewhere in there, there was a story with actors actually acting it out...but they were well hidden beneath the 3D effects and you really didn't get to see them.Thank God movies learned how to tone it down and find a happy medium since.

I watched this with my wife and although we enjoyed it, it's really more of a family movie. Packed full of action but nothing too frightening or violent. It'd make for a perfect family Saturday viewing.It's loosely based on the Jules Verne sci-fi novel but don't expect a nuanced science fiction plot line. The focus here is all on the spectacular, indeed completely over-the-top, effects and action scenes.It's easy viewing, but not all that exciting. The characters never feel like (or act like) they're in that much danger even though they're buried deep under the earth with little chance of escape. Can't be too critical though. This movie doesn't pretend to be any more than what it is - a light-hearted family thriller.