Lightdeossk Captivating movie !

Kidskycom It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

AutCuddly Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

Derry Herrera Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

MBunge Back in 2008, there was a big budget remake of Journey to the Center of the Earth. It starred Brendan Fraser, had computer generated dinosaurs and was in 3D. As has become common, someone decided to do a low budget version of the same story. This one stars Ricky Schroder, has the gorgeous scenery of the Canadian wilderness and is very much in 2D. Unlike most of these "mockbuster" knockoffs which stink out loud, this version of Jules Verne's classic tale is a mostly competent piece of family friendly entertainment. If you're looking for something just as wholesome as the 1959 original with James Mason, but with a more modern sensibility and less frenetic than the Fraser rendition, you'll find it here.In late 19th century America, shortly after the purchase of Alaska from Russia, a headstrong heiress (Victoria Pratt) hires an adventuresome anthropologist (Ricky Schroder) to lead an expedition to track down her missing husband (Peter Fonda). With only a handwritten map to guide them and joined by the anthropologist's enthusiastic nephew (Steven Grayhm) and a Russian expatriate (Mike Dopud), the group discover a hidden mine in the hills of Seward's Folly that leads them down into the Earth and a subterranean world of dinosaurs, primitive tribesmen and a prehistoric zip line. After a weirdly-faithful-to-its-setting relearning of the old lesson about the perils of playing god, our intrepid band of terranauts must flee for their lives in a not-that-desperate bid for the surface.Now, while this telling of Journey to the Center of the Earth is low budget, it's not "hand-held camera, made for about $67.29" cheap. All the sets and costumes meet the standards of your average TV movie and director T. J. Scott makes great use of his locations to give the film a much bigger feel and appearance than it could otherwise afford. The budgetary restrictions are noticeable in the rather sedate and basic nature of the film's action sequences. Without the resources to stage very complicated scenes of fighting or other physical peril, director Scott has to resort to other means of generating excitement. He's mostly successful, except for the previously-mentioned prehistoric zip line. That's one of those low budget movie scenes where the filmmakers do it because it's inexpensive and sounds good in theory but turns out to look rather silly on the screen.Ricky Schroder and the other 3 actors in the main roles give quite likable performances, which is good because they're on screen for virtually the entire film. Peter Fonda seems a little disconnected from what's going on, but maybe he was just having some 60s drug flashback during production. The script is completely adequate. It's not especially smart or clever but neither is it grating or insultingly stupid. Director Scott does a good job managing the pace of this essentially G rated melodrama and tries to give the characters a teeny, tiny bit of emotional depth. Given its financial limitations, this Journey to the Center of the Earth is a largely admirable effort.While I think it's the best of the lot, the 1959 James Mason movie is going to be dated in tone and technique to many of today's viewers. If you'd like the same sort of storytelling with a more contemporary style and don't want to be visually assaulted by big budget Hollywood crap, take a gander at this motion picture. You might be pleasantly surprised.

zardoz-13 Veteran television director T.J. Scott's made-for-cable spin on Jules Verne's venerable crackpot classic "Journey to the Center of the Earth" qualifies as lackluster juvenile nonsense. Apart from the use of Verne's name, the title of his novel, its 19th century setting, and some isolated incidents from the text, including an encounter with dinosaurs, this movie shares little in common with Verne's text. This version relocates the action to Alaska in the 1870s so that it initially looks like a hybrid western. No, The protagonist, a financially strapped San Francisco-based archaeologist Jonathan Brock (Ricky Schroder of "N.Y.P.D. Blue"), proves he is no armchair academician. The first time we lay eyes on Brock, he is slugging it out with an opponent in a bare-knuckles boxing match. As it turns out, this is how Brock raises money to fund his expeditions. Whenever actor Ricky Schroder gets near a boxing ring, you cannot help but remember one of his early and most memorable roles as a kid who hung out with a championship boxer in "The Champ." Jules Verne's protagonist, German-b0rn Professor Liedenbrock, was nothing like Brock. Liedenbrock was a professor of, as Verne wrote, "chemistry, geology, mineralogy, and many other ologies." Once he triumphs over his knuckle-headed adversary, Brock and his young nephew, Abel (Steven Grayhm) who dreams of life as a journalist, return home. A wealthy, blonde, heiress Martha Dennison (Victoria Pratt) approaches Brock about a proposition. She has been trying to locate her missing husband, Edward Dennison (Peter Fonda of "Easy Rider"), who vanished about four years ago searching for a passage to the center of the earth. Actually, Dennison discovered a passage through an abandoned mine, though Brock believes that no such mine exists. In any case, in Verne's tale, no woman like Martha approaches Liedenbrock about a rescue mission to the center of the Earth. Martha offers to fund his expedition to East Indies if he will help her find her husband because the two men think alike. "I'm no detective," Brock point out. "I'm a scientist." Martha retorts, "I'm looking for a man who can put himself in Edward's place, an adventurer who can think, strategize, and execute a plan as he would. A man who can discover and follow the trail he would have taken." Our heroes travel by ship to Alaska, ride like hell over rugged terrain, climb a lot of ropes, and waggle their jawbones. Eventually, they reach a point where they have to calculate how to enter the Earth's crust to access the interior world. Scott and writers Thomas "The Manhattan Project" Baum and William "Prom Night" Gray stage a scene where our heroes arrive at their destination punctually in ten days time to determine where the sun's rays penetrate the Earth so that they can locate the hidden mine shaft. This serves as their point of departure for the center of the earth. They emerge near a lake at the base of a volcano. Martha goes skinny dipping while the three guys are away, and she gets the crap scared out of her when something underwater touches her. Jonathan, Abel, and their guide—a Czarist refugee Russian called Sergei Petkov (Michael Dopud of "The Pathfinder") who had earlier saved Brock's life— fabricate a raft out of timber left-over from Dennison's expedition. The best part of this lowbrow thriller occurs on the lake when a prehistoric serpent appears in several shots and some of the worse looking prehistoric birds are there, too. There is a good shot of the serpent from the bottom of the lake looking up at the raft that our heroes are sailing. Unfortunately, unlike Verne's tale, the producers couldn't afford a second prehistoric creature so that they could replicate the fight in Chapter 30 of Verne's novel.Essentially, Dennison's story resembles Rudyard Kipling's tale "The Man Who Would Be King" where two Englishmen enthroned themselves as monarchs until one bled and the villagers executed him and exiled the second. Dennison rules a tribe of Native American Indian types that rely on bows and arrows. These people have migrated to the center of the Earth. The finale with our heroes fleeing from fierce Native American-like primitives is ho-hum. It seems that Dennison rigged up a trolley system of ropes in the trees, and our heroes and heroine slide down these ropes ahead of the pursuing redskins on hand-clinched trolleys. Scott never conjures up any suspense because you know that Brock, Martha, Abel, and Sergei are going to survive the myriad perils. The most surprisingly scene occurs when Dennison shoots a warrior in the head in the manner of an execution. A furious Martha strikes Edward for killing the warrior in cold blood and the sight of blood turns Edward's people against him and forces our heroes to flee for their lives. Earlier, Dennison's wife Martha and Brock squabble about a variety of things, while Abel—maintaining a journal of their experiences—hints at the romance burgeoning between them. At one point, Martha explains that she was been married to Edward for a year. Edward has little use for her when they reunite at the center of the earth. Once they escape from the center of the Earth, Martha—Liedenbrock's housekeeper in Verne's novel had the same name—wants to accompany him on further adventures.Scott's version of "Journey to the Center of the Earth" is strictly disposable. Peter Fonda isn't worth the wait and his character—like the rest of the characters—are far from memorable. The Canadian scenery lends some splendor to our heroes' shenanigans, but the shoe-string budget often undermines the film's epic quality. Lenser Philip Linzy's cinematography is the best thing about this execrable adventure.

asinyne I actually thought this film was interesting mainly BECAUSE it took some liberties and deviated from all the other versions of this work. It actually made more sense to me the way it was done here. I thought it looked pretty nice also and it was cool seeing Peter Fonda in a role that seemed to really fit him.The biggest problems with the film were casting. Other than Fonda and the guy playing the Russian I felt the actor choices were not the best. I have nothing against the guy from Silver Spoons but he really seemed pretty ill at ease most of the time. He and the leading lady Victoria Platt had zero chemistry...nada. I would have liked somebody like Sean Patrick Flanery playing the lead. Another problem were the costumes worn by the Indians.....I think they could have come up with a look a bit more unique than what they did. They didn't look terrible but just seemed to me to be to much like typical Indians as opposed to a tribe that had been living beneath the surface of the earth for centuries.I wouldn't say this was the best movie I've ever seen but it helped me pleasantly pass a couple of hours. It was pretty unique actually, some good concepts put forward. Certainly a lot better than a 4.5 which is what it scored here. I usually appreciate it when someone comes at a classic yarn with a slightly different angle than the original. This is called being CREATIVE and there isn't so much of that in Hollywood today with all the reliance on computers to dazzle folks with eye candy.

TheUnknown837-1 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.