Journey To The Center Of The Earth: a.k.a. "Let's Make Jules Verne Spin In His Grave"

If the movie had anything as cool as the cover, we

Why was 2008 picked by two separate groups of people as the time to make movies only remotely based on a classic Jules Verne book, yet still name the films after it? What forces conspired to call out to the spirit of Jules Verne and beg him to come back from the grave to kick the asses of the uncreative people behind these atrocities? Maybe I'm still stinging from the big blockbuster version I paid money to see in the theaters, and am still retching from the straight to video version I just watched. Maybe that's why I'm so mortally offended, and am contemplating the formation of a consortium designed to wipe this desecration out of the memories of the universe.

It's sad that Greg Evigan felt the need to drag his daughter, Vanessa Evigan, down with him on this one. Her career wasn't suffering badly enough already? C'mon, Greg, even if she asked you for a role, as a father you should protect her from something which so clearly can destroy her.

She was in the company of Michelle Pfeiffer's sister on this sinking ship that could never be called seaworthy no matter how sarcastic you're being. Poor DeeDee Pfeiffer got cast as a fidgety, annoying scientist who can't decide if she needs to wear her glasses or not, so took them on and off no less than five times in one minute. (I counted.) Even if I'd heard of her before, I won't remember her fondly after this, assuming I can't eradicate this experience from my consciousness as soon as this review (warning) is written.

The rest of the cast is no less injured by their appearance here. There's no real plot, so there's no real script, so there's no real dialogue, so you're just pounding your empty coffee cup against your head so you can feel something other than the pain in your left eye as you endure until the end because you're that stubborn. There's a bit of CGI to distract, but it has no purpose other than diverting your attention from a train wreck. They skimp on the monsters on top of everything, so this is a complete waste of time.

How they got away with naming this Journey To The Center Of The Earth when there's so few parallels to that story is beyond me. It's more like The Core than anything, but that's not a plus. The writing just goes through the motions. No one bothers to question why the sky is such a pretty blue when you're 600 kilometers below the surface, or how one of the team members stuck there figures out exactly where they're at by looking at a piece of quartz rock.

At first you think this movie will just be an excuse to show athletic women in tight fitting outfits running around and firing guns at T-Rexes and flowers. Then they throw in the ex-couple to go rescue them. Then they keep flashing back to this guy in a military uniform who is supposedly waiting for this demonstration of the transporter to be completed. The 'tension' between the characters is a farce, and so easily resolved I gave myself a concussion slapping my hand against my forehead in frustration. At the end, there's no resolution to any open issues, and the survivors bounce back and go out for beers. That was the only thing I thought made sense, because I needed a stiff drink after surviving this, too.

I could go on about how bad this movie is, rant how it sucked away two hours of my life, and left a wound on my tender psyche. However, I don't want to reinforce bad movie making behavior by giving this 'film' too much attention, so I will just ask that you all ignore it. Don't even look it up on Google. Let's make sure it fades into the ether as quickly as possible, and hope no one thinks there's 'room for a sequel.' If I hear that there will be, I'll start taking applications for membership in my consortium straight away.