'Journey to the Center of the Earth': Updating a Classic

With the Hannah Montana-Miley Cyrus 3-D concert film comfortably banking some $60 million in domestic ticket sales earlier this year and James Cameron's highly anticipated 3-D epic "Avatar" slated to open next year, the latest revival of the venerable 1950s glasses is, if nothing else, likely to be the most profitable go-round yet. Not surprisingly, the lure of big-screen spectacle that is bigger than flat-screen TV and deeper than PlayStation immersion has struck a chord with younger filmgoers.

Appropriately, the makers of the latest entry in the depth gimmick sweepstakes, "Journey to the Center of the Earth 3-D" (a 2-D version, no glasses required, also opens today), have updated the technique of 3-D photography for the digital age. Director Eric Brevig and cinematographer Chuck Schuman make the first use of the Fusion System, a dual-lens digital technology pioneered by Mr. Cameron that is a less cumbersome and more photographically versatile alternative to the old practice of racking a pair of slightly misaligned film cameras together in order to foster the illusion of depth. The 3-D effects in "Journey to the Center of the Earth" are, indeed, often marvelously clear and occasionally even breathtaking.

Unfortunately, the filmmakers have also upheld a tradition of subtracting depth at a script level as they add it at a visual level — one of the contributing factors (setting aside the cumbersome glasses and the mild headache the experience can produce) that doomed 3-D in its prior outbreaks. In updating Jules Verne's classic tale of adventure, screenwriters Jennifer Flackett, Michael Weiss, and Mark Levin have abandoned the 19th-century period setting of Verne's novel and Henry Levin's terrific two-dimensional movie version from 1959. Verne's expedition, mounted in the name of science, has now become a trip to the earth's core undertaken by geologist Trevor Anderson (Brendon Fraser) and his nephew Sean (Josh Hutcherson) in the name of family. Trevor's brother and Josh's father, Max (Jean Michel Paré), you see, went missing a decade prior during a geological survey in Iceland.

Once in the Land of Fire and Ice, the Andersons discover, via an orphaned Icelandic mountain guide named Hannah (Anita Briem), that both Max and Hannah's late fathers were "Vernians," a sort of scientific and literary cult that interprets the works of Jules Verne as fact. Together, the three retrace their lost family members' steps a little too closely and soon find themselves falling down a shaft so close to bottomless that Trevor has to remind them to scream as they continue to drop mile after mile.

Having survived a plunge that would rattle Bugs Bunny, our heroes set about exploring the world within a world that Verne apparently described accurately. Long shots of the vast domed seascape they discover resemble a digitally rendered 3-D Gainsborough knockoff. A ticking geological clock makes it imperative that they exit this scenic subterranean idyll before fluctuating temperatures, dinosaurs, carnivorous flora, and other perils make their odyssey a one-way trip.

"Journey to the Center of the Earth 3-D" has a lot of things going for it. Ms. Briem and Messrs. Fraser and Hutcherson have most of the film to themselves, and together they generate a reasonable amount of chemistry despite having to recite dialogue that is predominantly compo sed of declamatory exposition preceded by a breathless and emphatic exclamation of "Guys ... ." The 3-D chicanery is unending and, in the spirit of the Three Stooges' depth-enhanced shorts "Pardon My Backfire" and "Spooks," shamelessly goes for the eyes at every opportunity, beginning before the credits with aggressive versions of the New Line Cinema and Walden Media logos.

If the film's team of writers had nailed down the comic tone a little more tightly and, perhaps, made it either a little more consistently higher- or lower-brow than they've managed, "Journey to the Center of the Earth" might be more than the slight entertainment and exhibition curiosity that it is. A snarky, childish script too often saps the wonder out of what are, on occasion, some wonderful sights. Less a movie than a roller-coaster ride pitched at a no-brainer level of character, "Journey" deserves one of those "okay for all ages" signs emblazoned on amusement park attractions intended for, and therefore often shunned by, youngsters. Such a notice would offer the child in all of us fair warning of the tame thrills to come.