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List Price: $12.95 | | Label: Rhi Entertainment
Salesrank: 20694
Released: July 8, 2008 |
| Our Price: $1.99 |
| Used Price: $1.85 |
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MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
After noted explorer Edward Dennison vanishes, a search party, headed by anthropologist Jonathan Brock, embarks on a mission to trace Dennison's last known tracks through a secret passage in Alaska--a gateway to the very center of the Earth. What the team discovers is an underworld tribe of primitive warriors and prehistoric dangers unknown to civilization. Based on the well-known book by Jules Verne, Journey to the Center of the Earth stars Rick Schroder, Peter Fonda, and Victoria Pratt and includes collectible packaging and never-before-seen bonus features.
Journey to the Center of the Earth Reviews:
Holy Cruddy Movie 
2009-03-03 - This has got to be one of the best examples of a complete waste of time in my opinion. I am the kind of person that will sit through a movie to see if it gets better or to see if there is a point. This is a classic story, and the remakes are always hit and miss. When you have a good actor like Rick and an even better one with Fonda, you would hope for entertainment at the least. I did not expect a mind altering experience or a wonderful remake, but something entertaining. That is not too mauch to ask for, right? With this movie, it is way more to ask for. This movie is horrible, the acting is retched, and if ever there was a worse version of this movie, I have yet to have been forced to sit through it.
Journey to the Center of "thrifty",lackluster film making. 
2008-12-30 - Oy! Where to start? This just isn't a good movie. It's cheap, horribly cheaply made. The "Underground world" by some strange happenstance looks exactly like our surface world. And I mean exactly, same lake, same trees same footage of the same bird, everything. When a bear attacks the party, you never see the bear. The filmmakers didn't even bother to have our heroes attacked by archival footage of a bear. You hear it roar. That's it. There is zero sense of wonder or imagination and you get the feeling that's because the creators weren't even interested in trying to instill those things into this film. And that's what's really unforgivable about this movie. I can handle cheap films and sometimes I prefer them that way. But this movie doesn't just cheap out with the monetary budget, it cheaps out on ideas as well. There are plenty of cheap movies that manage to entertain through imagination and smart filmmaking. The actors in this sorry excuse for an adventure movie were all game enough I suppose, Schroeder was as believable as possible as a two-fisted professor type and Victoria Pratt was very appealing in her Western-wear but if the writers and director and producers didn't care much about this movie, which is pretty evident when you see it, then why should I care about it? The answer is; I don't. This movie commits what I consider one of the worst crimes a film can commit, it's totally, entirely and irrevocably forgettable.
Pedestrian
2008-12-30 - With the release of Brendan Fraser's 3-D "Journey to the Center of the Earth," it is not surprising that they made a made-for-TV adaptation based on the same Jules Verne story. Here Rick Schroder plays the hero Jonathan Brock (equivalent of the original's Professor Lindenbrock), who travels deep down to the center of the world, together with his nephew Abel Brock (Steven Grayhm), a Russian tough guy named Sergei (Mike Dopud) and a beautiful heiress Martha (Victoria Pratt), whose husband has been missing for more than four years.
As you see, they changed so many things from the original. Our hero is now an amateur pugilist fighting for money and the expedition team goes to Alaska, not an Icelandic volcano. (The film is apparently set in the 1870s, after the Alaskan purchase in 1867) But the biggest disappointment for me with this version is not these changes.
The slow-paced adaptation does not have enough action. Considerable time is spent on showing the characters walking and talking (with frequent voiceovers that are not exciting to hear) and the battle with the creatures look terribly cheap. There is a romance, but it is soon forgotten until the very end of the film. More damagingly the film's subterranean world looks exactly like the surface world. It looks as if the characters are only wandering somewhere in Canada. Maybe they are.
When we start to think we need more adventures, the film abruptly changes its tone with the appearance of grim-looking Peter Fonda. Now the story looks like a cross between "The Lost World" and "Apocalypse Now." I think the film just ran out of imagination there. It is no longer a Jules Verne story, which is supposed to be fun. Brendan Fraser's big budget film is often criticized for being unfaithful to the original book, but it is fun.
Jouney to the Center of the Earth 
2008-11-17 - I call this a modern day journey compared to the orginal starring Pat Boone. There are times the sudden events made you jump. An enjoyable movie to watch with the family.
Can I Die Yet?
2008-11-03 - I guess I learned one valuable lesson from this version of JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH: just because the cover and back matter look pretty exciting, that doesn't mean the movie is going to be anything even close to note-worthy. Such is the case with this Peter Fonda / Ricky Schroder outing, which made me nearly squirm in the chair as I watched. The only thing that kept me going was the thought of being able to review it and warn away other potential buyers from what really is an utter atrocity of film-making.
That's not saying that 100% of this is awful. The one thing that this film has going for it is the cinematography. The settings are brilliant and wonderful. The costume pieces looked great, the props are amazingly detailed, all making me wonder if this would have been better as a documentary of sorts rather than an "action-adventure" film.
The acting is in the toilet. Really. Watching the characters made me feel like I was eating white rice without soy sauce -- blander than anything. Every few moments, the main character, Jonathan Brock, was yelling at his nephew to be careful. Literally as Abel (the nephew) is two feet behind them in the cave, the uncle yells out, "Abel! Stay with us!" about five times. And then there's the obligatory kiss between Martha Dennison, our heroine, and Mr. Brock at the end. Peter Fonda was a hack in this, and really, the only good actor was the Russian man, Sergei, who was highly underused.
All in all, stay away. Far away. This movie was an utter waste of an hour and a half of my life. Sigh. I'm such a sucker for shiny covers.
