REVIEW: Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D

Saw Journey to the Center of the Earth 3-D Friday as an opening act for The Dark Knight. I enjoyed watching Beowulf in 3-D last fall and I believe the technology has a great future for the movie industry.



This is the first live-action 3-D movie that I have seen and generally I would say that the 3-D effects were not really necessary for most of the film but they were extremely effective when incorporated with more standard visual effects like floating individual water droplets, flying luminescent birds and snapping fish.



Interestingly, the credits were surprisingly exciting because they moved towards the viewer rather rapidly. In fact, any sudden moves of objects towards the viewer are pretty fun. The 3-D effects applied to water in multiple different forms (spraying droplets, undulating waves and falling water) were definite standouts.



It's definitely a kid's movie but it is relatively engrossing for the 90 minute running time although it is somewhat marred by completely implausible physics which are offensive to any scientifically trained individual.(Stable equilibria for magnetic objects in magnetic fields do not exist!) Brendan Fraser, Josh Hutcherson and Anita Briem are all agreeable and have reasonable chemistry.



OVERALL GRADE: B-.

IMAGERY: B+.

ACTING: C+.

PLOT: C-.

IMPACT: B-.