Rating: NNN
Journey To The Center Of The Earth (Alliance, 2008) D: Eric Brevig, w/ Brendan Fraser, Josh Hutcherson. Rating: NNN DVD package: NN
Rejoice! The 3-D works. Despair!
It’s far from perfect. The sea monster and T. Rex attacks and some Icelandic scenery work fine, but others, like the inner-world vista and the glowbird, fall flat. Objects have double edges, the picture is dark and, worst of all, flesh is a post-mortem green.
3-D is always dodgy, so I checked the movie through some other 3-D glasses. My results varied, but I suspect that some of this is fixable if you fiddle with your brightness and colour controls. Proceed at your own risk.
Or you can flip the disc and watch the movie flat, in widescreen or full- frame, for a kid-friendly evening’s amusement involving a geologist (Brendan Fraser), his nephew (Josh Hutcherson) and their guide (Anita Briem) who fall through a hole in Iceland into a prehistoric world of dinosaurs, luminous birds and some truly marvellous floating rocks.
Director Eric Brevig fully understands 3-D’s most profound artistic strength – namely, throwing things in your face. This is less fun when viewed flat. He keeps the tone light and his cast cheery.
Extras include an amusing doc on the origins of the hollow-earth theory and a jokey commentary from Brevig and Fraser.
EXTRAS Commentary, hollow-earth doc, making dinosaur drool doc, Hutcherson on set doc. 3-D, widescreen, full-frame. English, French audio. English subtitles.
