It happens sometimes, a moment of clarity when you suddenly realise the film you’re watching – which you’ve approached with all due diligence, notebook at the ready, because you’re a professional film reviewer reviewing a film made by professional filmmakers – doesn’t expect such seriousness of purpose, and in fact doesn’t deserve it. It happened last month with The Darkest Hour, round about the time when our heroes, fighting an alien invasion in Moscow – probably the most land-locked capital in the world – announced their plan to escape on a nuclear submarine which had somehow docked in the Moscow River, thousands of miles from the nearest ocean. And it happens again in Journey 2: The Mysterious Island, a sudden realisation that this film is crap, and doesn’t mind being crap, and in fact takes pride in being crap. What, as a conscientious film reviewer, do you do?
For me, the moment came early, when our teenage hero Sean Anderson – a “somewhat troubled youth” played by surly Josh Hutcherson – and his stepfather Hank, played by Dwayne Johnson (né The Rock), study a coded message which Sean is convinced comes from his long-lost grandpa. Hank was in the Navy, and soon manages to break the code. Look, it says ‘island’, he points out, and Sean gets quite excited: “The Mysterious Island! Vernians have been looking for that for years!”. Now here’s a reference to Steven … young Steven, maybe son of Steven, Steven-son, yes, Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson – and look, says Sean, taking out a book from a handy satchel, I happen to have it right here. Now here’s another clue, something about his surname being “fast”. What’s another word for ‘fast’, oh yes ‘swift’, Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels – and yes, exclaims Sean with the air of a TV chef producing one he made earlier, I’ve got that book right here as well! Maps are extracted, placed on top of each other: “What are those?” asks Sean, pointing to a set of numbers which are clearly co-ordinates (so much for being a straight-A student). And hooray: the Mysterious Island has been found! Cut to … Sean’s mum and Hank drying dishes in the kitchen, pondering what to do next as if debating whether to give permission for a sleepover.
Sean is a “Vernian”, part of a (fortunately fictional) cadre who take the work of Jules Verne literally, as if it were gospel (“You gotta believe,” says our fundamentalist hero). The film isn’t so respectful, doing a Jules Verne mash-up and stuffing it with ridiculous detail. That coded-message scene, with clues deciphered in a matter of seconds and classic tomes popping up as required, is only the beginning. Hank decides to take Sean to the far-off Pacific location described by the co-ordinates, hoping the two can bond; there they meet screechy local pilot Luis Guzman – a kind of retarded-sidekick figure from a show aimed at pre-school children – and his nubile daughter (Vanessa Hudgens), and they all take off for the island only to get caught in a terrible storm. It’s all right, says Sean smugly as the chopper judders and lurches, you have to get sucked into a hurricane in order to find the Mysterious Island, it’s right here in Jules Verne. Don’t you hate fundamentalists?
On the island they find giant butterflies (“Ooohhhh!” shrieks Guzman. “Thees island! It shrunk us!”) and mini-elephants, as well as long-lost grandpa (Michael Caine). Grandpa, it turns out, could’ve left at any time. He’s built a house, like a modern-day Crusoe, but in fact he has a radio (that’s how he sent the coded message) and could’ve called for help – but decided not to, because “I wanted an Anderson to see the place first”. He’s also figured out that the island is Atlantis, and is due to sink in 14 years – but in fact his calculations turn out to be flawed (guess he forgot to carry the zero) and the island is going to sink in a matter of hours, making a quick escape imperative. So, to recap: there was no need to come to this island in the first place – except just to see it – and, having come, they need to escape asap. Just as well Captain Nemo’s submarine the ‘Nautilus’ is anchored just off the island, like it says in Chapter 16 of Jules Verne.
Is there more? Yes indeed. Dwayne and Caine exchange playground insults. Dwayne punches a giant lizard, bounces berries off his pecs and summarises the film’s plot to the strains of Louis Armstrong’s ‘It’s a Wonderful World’ (“Music,” he explains, “is Nature’s painkiller”). Meanwhile the teens perform a short educational interlude, talking of parents and how embarrassing they can be. “Isn’t it the worst when they try too hard?”; “No… (meaningful pause) The worst would be if they didn’t do anything.”
It feels wrong just to list the many cheesy moments in Journey 2 – especially since it risks making the film sound fun, when in fact it’s annoying. No amount of stirring music and awed exclamations (“Wow!”; “Unbelievable!”; “That’s awesome!”) can disguise the shoddy visuals, and no amount of good-humoured idiocy can disguise the film’s laziness, the fact that it doesn’t even try. Journey to the Centre of the Earth was a pleasant surprise four years ago but Journey 2 is a cynical cash-in, lacking any sense of wonder or even belief in the material; its target audience seems to be very young children who’ll gawp at it mindlessly (though in fact they may be scared by the monsters) and very jaded children who’ll mock it and feel superior. Meanwhile, The Rock smiles and smiles, while Caine – a hardened veteran of bad movies – does his cockney routine and rides a giant bee (!). His moment of clarity happened years ago.
DIRECTED BY Brad Peyton
STARRING Josh Hutcherson, Dwayne Johnson, Michael Caine
US 2012 94 mins
