Journey to the Center of the Earth

Let's be clear about one thing: Journey to the Center of the Earth is more a demo reel than a narrative feature. It's a decent compendium of familiar look-at-me moments intended to show off the latest and greatest in 3-D filmmaking, in which the same thing's shot twice, more or less merged into a blurry single image and rendered vaguely lifelike through the polarized shades of the RealD glasses you get to wear (and keep!). Brendan Fraser, who's played against green screens for so long that he has forgotten how to relate to people, is Trevor Anderson, a disheveled science professor nursing an ache for a brother who died looking for the center of the Earth. Directed by Eric Brevig, the movie takes it time arriving at the planet's core and then rushes to escape from it, almost in embarrassment. There's good reason not to linger downtown: Episodes of Land of the Lost were more inspired.