Movie review: Going on a 'Journey 2: The Mysterious Island'

Remember those movies you loved as a kid? You find a DVD and you try to watch it now, and you say to yourself, “What was I thinking?”

 

That’s how “Journey 2: The Mysterious Island” made me feel. 

 

The boy adventurer

 

“Journey 2” continues the story of Sean Anderson (Josh Jutcherson), whom we first met in “Journey to the Center of the Earth.” 

 

In the first movie, Sean and his uncle (Brendan Fraser) travel to Iceland, where Sean’s father is believed to have gone. Sean’s father, a scientist, is a fan of Jules Verne, and the movie quickly reenacts the famous novel, complete with a Nordic travel guide. 

 

This time, Sean is in search of his grandfather (Michael Caine), yet another Vernian. But instead of going deep into the earth, he’s off on a mysterious island.

 

Alexander Anderson, like many other Verne readers, has been searching for the mysterious island for years. According to Sean, Vernians believe that Verne based his novels on fact, and spend much of their lives trying to discover the places Verne wrote about. 

 

When Sean receives a mysterious broadcast, he knows his grandfather has found the island, and decides to find him. Hoping to end Sean’s unshakable faith in his absent grandfather, his mother (Kristin Davis) allows him to travel to Palau with her husband Hank (Dwayne Johnson). There they meet helicopter pilot Gabato (Luis Guzman) and his daughter Kailani (Vanessa Hudgens), and they fly off to parts very much unknown. 

 

You have to wonder whether or not Sean Anderson is a lucky boy indeed. Sure, he keeps going on these adventures, but he almost gets killed—twice!

 

Inquiring minds want to know

 

I pondered a few other things during the movie, questions I might not have asked if I were an 8-year-old watching “Journey 2.” 

 

For instance, where was Brendan Fraser’s character? It seemed so easy to ship Sean off to his uncle in the first movie, and their experience in the center of the earth surely brought them closer as a family, so why was he nowhere to be found now, just because Sean’s mother had remarried? 

 

Perhaps only once in “Journey 2” did Sean ever mention his adventure in the previous movie, which I found odd. It seemed as though “Journey 2” was written as a separate movie, and the producers thought, “Hey, let’s make this a sequel for ‘Journey to the Center of the Earth’!”

 

I also wonder how well the movie represents the book, or rather, the books: the movie claims that Jules Verne was not alone in writing about this mysterious island, but that Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Treasure Island” and Jonathan Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels” are about the same place. If you’re a fan of any or all the books, would the movie’s hypothesis be exciting or appalling for you? 

 

Throughout the movie I kept vacillating between wondering at this adaptation of a well-beloved work, and enjoying the wonder of discovering the strange and exotic. I really think I would’ve enjoyed the movie so much more if I were 8 years old. Then I could just gawk at the 3D scenes and marvel at the Lilliputian wonders.

 

Larger than life

I think 8-year-old me would have put this movie on a list of favorites. There was adventure, travel, mystery, feisty kids, silly adults and a happy ending. And of course, there’s 3D.

 

3D is such a double-edged sword: it works so well for animated flicks like “Happy Feet Two” and “How to Train Your Dragon,” but it seems to fail so much for live-action movies. “Avatar” only made me dizzy, and with other movies the novelty of the effect was lost after maybe five minutes of awesome footage.

 

“Journey 2” seems to have been made with the goal of showing off what the production company can do with 3D. It works, though: the lava looks like it’s going to flow from the volcano straight into the theater. But the underwater scenes are the best part: beautiful sea creatures, a curious vessel, and the play of light in the water currents. 

 

Perhaps most notable are the animals they picked to resize: rather like “Alice in Wonderland,” what’s big is small and what’s small is big. The creatures look like something out of a “National Geographic” documentary, where the high-speed camera allows you to see every feather fluttering in the wind, every hair flowing with movement, every scale a veritable map with infinite detail. Of course, watching in IMAX helps you see all the pretty stuff.

 

Acting up

You can’t really talk about the pretty stuff in “Journey 2” without talking about Vanessa Hudgens. It seems Hudgens hasn’t progressed far beyond her “High School Musical” days. Here she’s a plucky girl saving up for college instead of a pretty nerd out to capture the jock’s heart, but she’s still the same Vanessa Hudgens you saw in “Sucker Punch”—pretty but dull. 

 

Josh Hutcherson, however, seems to have successfully carved out a niche for himself as the go-to young actor for teen/adventure/family movies. Consider these titles from his IMDB page: “The Hunger Games” (coming out later this year), “Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant”, “Bridge to Terabithia”, and “Zathura: A Space Adventure.” There’s something in his demeanor that suggests a young man ready for adventure, a young man who’s just like you or me, and that if you were in his place you’d do the same things. Though you see nothing new in his acting in “Journey 2,” he fits in the role pretty well.

 

But my favorite actor in the movie was Dwayne Johnson. He’s rather predictable as an action star, but I think his true talent lies in comedy. He and Brendan Fraser share a talent for being funny while throwing punches or swinging from vine to vine, something Harrison Ford was very good at as Indiana Jones. 

 

But with movies like the Indiana Jones saga as a peg, “Journey 2” falls a bit short. Whereas you can watch Indiana Jones whether you’re 8, 18 or 38 years old, “Journey 2” isn’t so much fun when you’re a grown-up and you can see all the flaws in the writing. Plus Luis Guzman just gets annoying as the movie progresses, and that’s definitely a drawback.

 

All in all, “Journey 2: The Mysterious Island” gets lost in its own storytelling, so it gets a rating of only 2 out of 5 adventures. –KG, GMA News

Photos courtesy of Warner Bros. Philippines

 

Regina Layug Rosero has worked in IT, student publications, fashion and population studies, but writing is her first love. When not slaving over a deadline Regina plays with her five cats and her “Star Wars” collectibles. On weekends she wears a biker scout helmet.