Journey To The Center Of The Earth

Most of the movie, directed by Eric Brevig, is as daft, outlandish, and speedy as it needs to be, and, for all its newfangled effects, touchingly old-fashioned in its reverence for the Jules Verne novel that inspired it.

Perfectly charming as well as predictably eye-popping.

Flat and predictable, though the visuals are often striking.

If 3D is indeed the future of movies, we're going to need something more substantial than Journey to the Center of the Earth to convince us.

If, at this moment, the child next to you grabs your arm and hollers "Duck!", the movie will have been worth the ticket price.

The absence of star charisma in Journey denies the audience some focus in a movie that keeps changing backdrops and is ultimately no more than the sum of its wild-eyed parts.

This latest adaptation of Journey to the Centre of the Earth is clean cut entertainment recommended for a family night out, although some scenes may frighten the little ones.

Brendan Fraser's physical dexterity and comic timing are laid out in good order here, and "Journey" is pretty much a Frasermobile. Without him, it just doesn't go anywhere.

Journey relentlessly dishes out the action and offers the bespectacled audience plenty of goopy, grabby 3-D jolts, but it all resembles a run of the mill video game. Brevig can't shake the material loose from its unbridled artificiality."

Whilst 3D glasses might mask this lapse of originality by putting it all in your face, from a standard visual plane, the creative potential of Verne's novel appears to be inexcusably wasted.

Overall, everyone involved does well, but no one besides the 3D is doing much to drop your jaw.

...rather juvenile...with many of its shots intended more to show off the 3-D process than to further its story line.