Journey to the Center of the Earth

About 1,400 screens across the land are equipped for a "RealD" digital 3-D format, which helps make it the coolest movie of the summer for kids, if not a kind of thrill ride for just about everyone's eyes.

An old-fashioned, rip-roaring, seat-of-the-pants action film that harkens back to the days of the Saturday matinee movies of the 1950s.

A reassuringly cheesy and wholly enjoyable new version of Journey to the Center of the Earth starring Brendan Fraser and a lot of stuff aimed directly at your head.

Journey to the Center of the Earth is, essentially, nothing but a thrill ride -- the cinematic equivalent of an amusement-park attraction.

You may have the feeling you are on a roller coaster that never stops -- especially in 3D -- but this Journey is tremendously exciting for every member of the family.

While it piles on the special effects, it provides a predictable, modest plot that comes to life in the performances of the likable cast.

Journey to the Center of the Earth is not a cinematic masterpiece, but it is a fast, funny popcorn movie that flies by like the roller-coaster ride it will surely be turned into someday.

Journey may be an utterly weightless movie, but in the end it floats rather nicely.

Eric Brevig's smart update of Journey to the Center of the Earth, starring a delightful Brendan Fraser as an intrepid geologist, is the most entertaining 3-D movie I've ever seen.

The eye candy alone is worth the price of admission, but Brevig unfolds an exciting, breakneck-paced story to boot, and it's often as cartoonishly funny as it is fantastic.

It has a one-track purpose: entertainment -- pure, simple and unfooled-around with. And in that purpose, it is unquestionably successful.

Fraser, as he proved in the Mummy movies, has a lightness to his performances that keeps this from turning tedious. The short running time helps, too.

The perfect movie for our current $4-a-gallon gasoline crunch -- because if you can't afford a vacation to your favorite theme park, this 3-D-extravaganza is the next best thing.

Journey is a legit action movie with action sequences, imaginative action set pieces and even one or two monsters.

Its 3D effects -- shamelessly, joyously indulged in by director Eric Brevig -- turn the whole movie into a ride.

Journey to the Center of the Earth would be a forgettable summer kiddie action movie except for the novel visual effects that make it a sight to see. Journey is the first fiction feature shot with new-generation digital 3-D cameras.

This fun-size popcorn movie packs enough adventure and humor into every bite to please the whole fam. Just be sure to catch it in 3-D.

Journey to the Center of the Earth boasts outstanding 3-D effects, some truly remarkable stuff, such as a bug's antennae poking out at you so realistically you'll feel like they're going to poke you in the eye.

The script, from Michael Weiss, Jennifer Flackett and Mark Levin, is simplistic as can be with its cliched squabbling-family dynamics offering little more than a hook for the 3-D technicians to hang their hats on.

The new Journey to the Center of the Earth, whether or not you see it in 3-D, has about as much gravitas as a helium balloon.

Without the 3-D effects, Journey to the Center of the Earth is just another cinematic theme park ride, bursting with empty big-screen calories.

It's harmless fun, and it makes for an often impressive display of the latest generation of computer-wizardry. But the enterprise is utterly void of substance: instantly forgettable and about as enriching as a rerun of Johnny Quest.

Journey is fun for the kiddies but it hardly represents an advance: As before, the gimmickry can't lift the boats of a threadbare storyline.

Unfortunately, the filmmakers pay virtually no attention to details. Characters wet to the bone dry out within two minutes, yet they don't sweat in 105-degree weather while assembling a wooden raft.

Journey is completely passable in 2-D. But viewing it through 3-D glasses not only quadruples the movie's entertainment value, it also explains why characters are constantly thrusting things at the camera.

Cheesy, cheesy, cheesy but fun, fun, fun, Journey to the Center of the Earth, a retro-update of the Jules Verne adventure novel, takes audiences to the planet's core via the corniest route imaginable.

Too bad there's no credible story, character development or other signs of a good movie behind all the movement. Good for kids, though. Squeaky clean. I suggest dropping them off and waiting for them in the car while re-reading the novel.

In 2-D, it's all achingly familiar. In 3-D, the story comes alive, despite the tacky sets and gimmicks. Put on those glasses and you get toothpaste spat in your face, a T-Rex breathing up your nostrils, and what may be the longest fall in movie history.

Brevig and a trio of screenwriters apparently couldn't wait to get underground to a prehistoric playground of sorts and catapult flying fish, flighty glow birds and a long line of other things our way. That's about the time I seriously began to lose interest.

Journey to the Center of the Earth is a largely forgettable update of the Jules Verne story, with loads of imagination and 3-D excitement but no personality.

This dumbed-down spin on Jules Verne's classic adventure tale was devised as a kid-friendly roller-coaster ride, and it delivers the goods. Whether anyone over the age of eight wants the goods is another matter altogether.

It's a nominally fun trip, but it's tissue-thin and instantly forgettable.

If the idea of being stuck inside the claustrophobic confines of a computer game turns you on, by all means take a Journey to the Center of the Earth. Otherwise, don’t.

Remake of the Jules Verne classic lacks some of the sense of wonder of earlier version despite its splashy special effects.

It's inoffensive and shiny and competent and kids will dig it, and I can already barely remember a single thing that happened.

Kids may be dazzled by the thrill-ride sequences, digital dinosaurs and 3-D effects, but older audiences have seen it all before.

Once the wow-factor of the RealD 3-D technology wears off viewers are left with a campy shell of an adventure film that in the end will likely play better to kids than adults.

The cast hits the right notes. Fraser, switching between affable good sport and heroic goofball, clearly doesn't mind this stuff.

The only reason to see it is the improved 3-D technology. But even that technology can't save this film, which looks like the spawn of a bad Sci-Fi Channel movie and a cheap video game

Having sat through the 3-D Journey to the Center of the Earth -- a movie whose adventure begins and ends with a roller-coaster ride -- it occurred to me that it played like a theme-park ride with a movie wrapped around it.

If I had seen it when I was 8, I would have remembered it with deep affection for all these years, until I saw it again and realized how little I really knew at that age.

The movie comes off as a 90-minute version of a ride attraction -- and is as wearisome as that implies.

For all the talk about what a larger than life experience this 3-D Journey would be, it was disappointing to discover on what a small scale the movie actually operates.

The plot's totally bare bones, and the rocky conditions look the same 10 feet or 10 bazillion miles below the surface -- more proof that this adventure feels like somewhere everyone's been many times before.

Only those hooked on the novelty of 3-D should bother taking this Journey. If you do not need to see water spit at you, however, there are better places to spend your summer movie money.

It's mostly for video game fans who wish movies were more like video games.

Journey to the Center of the Earth is merely one more example of Hollywood relying upon tricks and repetition when originality can't be conjured.

The characters utter lines from the kind of script that Hollywood screenwriters do in their sleep.

Fans of Fraser’s looking for him to provide quality action-adventure as well as laughs might wait three weeks for the release of The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor rather than take this Journey.

Journey to the Center of the Earth is not so much a movie as an amusement park ride.

The picture's PG rating ensures it's wholesome enough for the kids, who will probably be the only ones to get much of anything out of this flick and its cheap gimmick.

Make sure to catch this latest iteration of the Jules Verne novel on a screen projecting it in 3-D format (some prints are 3-D, others regular 2-D) because without all the fun visual effects of stuff "comin' right at ya," this journey's center will not hold.

Plays like a blander variation on the National Treasure flicks, albeit goosed up with 3-D effects that are sporadically engaging but inevitably suffer from the genre’s major drawback: a rapidly declining wow factor.

Journey provides a diverting if shallow entertainment, not to mention a glimpse of things to come.

Special effects have come a long way since Jurassic Park, but you wouldn't know it from Journey to the Center of the Earth, whose rampaging T-Rex looks only slightly more believable than the pitiful CG creatures found in your average Sci-Fi Channel movie.

It's just too bad that the creature effects and alien landscapes are still too cartoonish to thrill anyone over the age of 6. Ditto for the story.

The one good thing is that, at only 92 minutes, the film wraps up in a timely (and predictable) fashion, and it doesn't take itself too seriously.