JOURNEY 2 MYSTERIOUS ISLAND

The first movie, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, was a miserable excuse for a movie and so I am trying to figure out what compelled me to watch this sequel, Journey 2 Mysterious Island. Perhaps it was my love of adventure or maybe my fascination with Jules Verne. Josh Hutcherson (Sean) returns as the young adventurer who's family's lineage has been dedicated to deciphering the work of Jules Verne. They call themselves "Vernians" and believe that he wrote about actual places. Following the first movie, we now find ourselves searching for a great Mysterious Island and of course we find it. Inhabited by giant creatures and exotic wildlife, Sean is stranded on the island with his step-father their two tour guides. Thankfully this movie is a huge improvement on the first one which is almost certainly because Brendan Fraser didn't return. Obviously this movie is simple fodder. It's a family adventure with ludicrous scenarios and cartooned CGI fx... but it works. The spirit of Jules Verne is more prevalent this time and the overall energy of the movie is exciting. Johnson and Hutcherson are easy to watch and Luis Guzman offers a welcome comical character to pad the space between action sequences. Michael Caine also stars as Sean's 'Vernian' grandfather who had been lost on the island for years. Caine has never been more irritating and his performance aggravated me so much. Why an actor of his calibre would sign on for a movie like this is beyond me, but someone like Jon Voight, Donald Sutherland or Malcolm McDowell would have been a lot better. I don't really understand why these wonderful Jules Verne stories have been adapted this way, rather than being faithful to his original stories, but at least these movies acknowledge Verne and his significance to literature. Kids come away from these movies knowing who he was and what he wrote and I cannot fault them for that. The movie concludes with the beginning of the next adventure and the 3rd film is already in production. From The Earth to the Moon!!

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