Dir. Eric Brevig, US, 2008, 93 mins - in Digital 3D in many
venues
Cast: Brendan Fraser, Josh Hutcherson, Anita Briem Review by Carol Allen This could fairly
be described as "inspired
by" Jules Verne's novel of the same name, rather than
being a film version of same. Science professor Trevor Anderson
(Fraser) is regarded as a bit of a joke by his colleagues
due to his adherence to the theories of his elder brother
Max, lost many years ago on an expedition designed to prove
that Verne's vision of the centre of the earth was fact,
not fiction. When Trevor and Max's teenage son Sean (Hutcherson)
find Max's annotated copy of the book they set off to Iceland
to test out the theory. With their sceptical Icelandic guide
Hannah, they become trapped in a cave, discover an old diamond
mine, then fall through the equivalant of the Alice in Wonderland
rabbit hole and find themselves in Verne's prophesied underground
world.
Director Brevig, making his directorial
debut here, is a veteran special effects supervisor, who
won an Oscar for his work on Total Recall and whose many other
films include Hook, Pearl Harbor and The
Day After Tomorrow. So the film is not surprisingly
lavish and effective in the use of his expertise in conjuring
up this weird and wonderful world and its creatures, which
include flying killer fish, man eating plants and a big,
scary, lumbering dinosaur. It is though primarily a good
old fashioned adventure tale lacking perhaps the sophisticated
wit of the Indiana Jones films but still keeping the action
going at a fair old lick. There's a particularly impressive
and edge of the seat roller coaster ride through the mine.
The effects sometimes drown out the dialogue, but it's not
in this case a serious problem. It's the action that matters
here, not the chat. The three principals carry virtually
the whole of the film apart from a few supporting actors
at the beginning and the end and they make an impressive
team, drawing us into the action and keeping us rooting for
them.
This is excellent fare for a school
holiday treat. If you can, try to see it in state of the
art digital 3D, which adds to the fun and thrills. Lots
of stuff coming out of the screen and making you duck,
which has been a staple of the experience, ever since Howard
Keele chucked a banana towards the audience in an early
3D version of Kiss
Me Kate (1953).
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