I've never read Jules Verne's "Journey to the Centre of the Earth" and I'm unlikely to in the future. I don't care if this movie is true to its source. I don't care that they spell centre the American way. I don't care that Brendan Fraser isn't Laurence Olivier. I don't care that the hot Icelandic mountain guide's name is a boy's name not a girl's name. I don't care that the rollercoaster ride through the mineshafts is lifted from INDY 2. I don't care that the dinosaurs look like cheap JURASSIC PARK knock-offs. I don't even care that the boy-hero (the kid from TERABITHIA) takes a cell-phone call in the freakin' centre of the earth!
I don't care because JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH is fun! Good, old-fashioned, B-movie, popcorn-tastic fun. A kid, his ludicrously buff scientist-uncle and a Scandy hiker fall through a volcano into the centre of the earth. It's a great little adventure. There are mean beasties and what the UK film censors like to call "mild peril". There are some laughs, some mild 3-D inspired surprises and the whole thing is as much fun as Thunder Mountain Rail Road crossed with the Indiana Jones ride at Universal Studios.
This film is just so good-natured and the minutes slip by so easily that I simply can't see what anyone has against it. Roll on the nicely set-up sequel!
JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH is on release in Brazil, Canada, Panama, Taiwan, the UK and the US. It opens later in July in France, Argentina, Mexico, Turkey, Israel and Thailand. It opens in August in Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong, Poland, Portugal, and Venezuela. It opens in September in the Netherlands, Finland, Russia, Iceland, Australia, Greece and Norway.
I didn't expect to have such a good time watching NIM'S ISLAND. I couldn't imagine Jodie Foster playing comedy - nor romantic comedy opposite Gerard "This is Sparta!" Butler. And the thought of Abigail Breslin as an abandoned child on a tropical island, doing a HOME ALONE against "invading" litter-bug tourists made me break out in hives. But what can I say? NIM'S ISLAND is a well-made, nicely acted, warm-hearted....just fun. Somehow it's plot contrivances didn't bother me. Maybe because the film-makers (the guys behind LITTLE MANHATTAN) took such pains with making the CGI blend seamlessly with the live action.
The plot is simple. Nim is a small girl living with her father - a marine biologist - on a tropical island. When her father is lost at sea, Nim asks her favourite adventure writer to come and rescue her. Unfortunately she discovers that Alex Rover is in fact a frightened, house-bound middle-aged woman. Still, Alexandra conquers her fears, forms a bond with Nim, and all ends happily. Awwww. Just go watch it. It's better than it sounds!
NIM'S ISLAND is on release in Australia, Romania, the US, France, the Philippines, Switzerland, Italy, Taiwan, Turkey, Thailand, Belgium, Russia, Singapore and the UK. It opens later in Iceland on May 16th; in Germany on June 19th; in Hungary on June 26th; in Argentina on July 17th; in Brazil and Mexico on July 18th; in Spain on July 25th; in the Netherlands on August 7th; and in Finland and Norway on September 26th.
LITTLE MANHATTAN is a movie that sounds so sweet it'll trigger your diabetes. A cute little ten-year old kid lives in the sort of movie-Manhattan made famous by Woody Allen. Indeed, the movie trades heavily on Woody Allen voice-over's, self-conscience cynicism and New York romanticism. His cramped apartment is populated by his divorcing parents, who by that film-friendly "quirk of the New York legal code" have to live together until the financial settlement is completed.
The story is simple - the aforementioned cute kid takes a karate class one summer and meets Rosemary - another cute kid, and they begin a hesitant two week friendship that will turn into Gabe's first real love. The movie is filmed in lush tones and full of little kids saying unbelievably mature and articulate things. John Hutcherson's performance as Gabe has some of the credibility of, say, Fred Savage in THE WONDER YEARS, but Charlie Ray's performance as Rosemary is painfully self-aware. This is hardly her fault given the dialogue. In the adult roles, Bradley Whitford (Josh Lyman in The West Wing) is fine as Gabe's father and Cynthia Nixon retains her Miranda-esque personality as the mother.
Despite all this, LITTLE MANHATTAN is a pleasant enough way to spend 90 minutes. It's a neat romantic-comedy and by far less saccharine that anyone had the right to expect although still probably half-a-teaspoon too sweet for me. One particularly corny line concerning how to clear the air with an estraged wife had me cringing. All in all, more TV comedy than Woody Allen. The only other thing I would say is that while this is a movie in which the protagonists are kids, it is a film for nostalgic adults.
LITTLE MANHATTAN went on limited release in the US in 2005 and in Mexico, the Philippines, Brazil, Australia, Poland, Argentina, the UK, Italy and France in 2006.
