Journey to the Center of the Earth.

"Let's be clear about one thing: Journey to the Center of the Earth is more a demo reel than a narrative feature." Robert Wilonsky in the Voice: "It's a decent, if overly familiar and yawningly obvious compendium of look-at-me moments intended to show off the latest and greatest in stereo 3D filmmaking."

"Previous Journeys - no fewer than five television projects and four feature films have worn the name - have been more trudge than adventure, despite attempts to boost the novel's sometimes leaden pace with additional love interests, murderous rivalries, a martyred duck, a massive ape, humanoid dinosaurs, sexy primeval girls, noble Maori rebels, gunrunning, and, in a confusing 1989 version that doubled as a sequel to Alien From LA, Kathy Ireland." A brief history from Andrew Stuttaford in the New York Sun.

This Journey "would be barely passable under normal circumstances, but in 3-D it's a circus of excellent FX," writes David Edelstein in New York. "If today's movies take place inside computers anyway, it's nice when the technology can usher us inside, too."

Salon's Stephanie Zacharek: "Best of all, just as the effects in Journey to the Center of the Earth start to become tiresome, the thing is over: Part of its beauty lies in its economy."

The New York Times' AO Scott would like to have avoided the cliché, but: "If this movie is not a ride, then what is it? One thing it may not be, quite, is a movie."

"Thank goodness [Brendan] Fraser himself is an effect: square-jawed and chiseled, entirely unpretentious in movement and demeanor, a true leading man in ways that even computerized bombast can't smother and suffocate," writes Keith Uhlich at UGO. "If someone's got to Roman shower the audience with spit, dribble, and Colgate, let it be him."

At the AV Club, Tasha Robinson talks with Fraser and director Eric Brevig.

More from Bruce Bennett (New York Sun), Peter Bradshaw (Guardian), Richard Corliss (Time), Alonso Duralde (MSNBC), Roger Ebert (Chicago Sun-Times), Robert Hanks (Independent), Tim Robey (Telegraph), Tasha Robinson (AV Club), Mike Russell, Eric C Snider (Cinematical) and Andrew Wright (Stranger).

Posted by dwhudson at July 12, 2008 2:47 PM