Enjoyable Journey

Once it gets going, a new adaptation of Jules Verne classic works | Mark Hemingway

Given what we know about the natural world in the 21st century, it's hard to understand how fervently Jules Verne's 1864 novel, Journey to the Center of the Earth, gripped imaginations. "Hollow Earth" theories were widely accepted as a scientific possibility. Johannes Kepler and Edmund Halley had speculated that the earth might be composed of a series of concentric spheres.

Needless to say, we no longer believe in the possibility of worlds within worlds in any literal sense. Thus Walden Media's latest adaptation of Verne's pioneering sci-fi text takes a while to get off the ground. The first 20 minutes or so are leaden, as the film tries to establish a scientific pretext for the 21st century. The character development is also a bit ham-handed as the film tries to establish a relationship between Professor Treavor Anderson (Brendan Fraser) and his nephew Sean (Josh Hutcherson), son of his deceased brother.