Starring Dwayne Johnson, Josh Hutcherson. Written by Brian Gunn, Mark Gunn. Directed by Brad Peyton. PG. 90 min. Opens Feb. 11.
It didn’t have to be this way for Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, an authentically authoritative—and awesomely aerodynamic—screen presence who could have been a major action star. Instead, the former WWE champion has become a hardened veteran of feeble family flicks. Case in point: Journey 2: The Mysterious Island, a sequel to the forgotten (but profitable) 2008 adaptation of Jules Verne’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth.
The only actual connection between the two films is Josh Hutcherson, playing a moody young Vernian named Sean who insists that the author’s beloved 19th Century science-fiction tales were actually rooted in reality. The Rock replaces Brendan Fraser in the role of the older adventurer—in this case, Sean’s construction-worker stepfather—who joins his plucky charge in travelling off the grid and gawping appreciatively the CGI landscapes and creatures they find there. Screenwriters Brian and Mark Gunn have contrived a literarily bogus plot where the settings of Verne’s Mysterious Island and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels have been arbitrarily smutted together (with the submarine from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea on hand for good measure).
The complete misrepresentation of Verne’s work under the guise of introducing him to the multiplex generation is one of the film’s travesties; another is the blatant cheque-cashing acting of Michael Caine as the globe-trotting coot who leads Sean and his gang (including Vanessa Hudgens and her wet t-shirt) to the titular hidden fantasyland. Caine’s disinterest in the material is palpable, and after 90 minutes’ worth of laboured, low-stakes jungle adventures, we know how he feels.
