What can I say about Journey 2: The Mysterious Island? It was a little better than I expected and had some great visuals. Also, even though it seems like the Rock is just put into movies to lure the mindless masses into the movie theater, he actually kind of made the movie better than it would have been. The plot seems to be loosely based off of the first movie which I only saw bits and pieces of, but Josh Hutcherson (Soon to be in The Hunger Games.) returns as Sean Anderson who is an adventurer/scientist on a mission to find his grandfather Alexander Anderson who has gone missing and has apparently been looking for Jules Verne’s Mysterious Island for about half of his life. Really, it seems like they just cobbled together the pretense for them to head out and find the grandfather and mysterious island in about thirty seconds…. Which they probably actually did. Anyways, the Rock, who plays Sean’s gigantic, ex-Navy, stepfather decides to help Sean break a code sent from his grandfather in an attempt to be closer to him family wise. What Mr. The Rock didn’t count on was Sean being right that there is indeed a Mysterious Island. A Mysterious Island they have no way of getting off of before impending disaster strikes.
Really, the movie was never meant to be an Academy Award winner and it definitely wasn’t. With the acting talents of Vanessa Hudgens and Luis Guzman (As the father-daughter helicopter team that brought them to the island) intermingled with those of Josh Hutcherson and The Rock, they don’t measure up anything near to Michael Caine. What Rock doesn’t have in acting ability he more than makes up for in hilarity. There is a scene in the movie where he “pops” his pectoral muscles for about three minutes as he urges Josh Hutcherson and Guzman to bounce berries off of them. This as you know, is a sure fire way to win over any woman. The scene had me laughing my ass off, the Rock urging Hutcherson to “Feed them. They’re not going to stop until you do.” As funny as I found the scene, I can only imagine that young kids and their parents were probably left puzzled as to what in the shit they brought their kids to. But oh well, it made me laugh.
I never thought I’d say it, but Michael Caine and The Rock played off of one another well and were almost the best part of the movie. I say almost because the obvious best part of the movie was the special effects throughout. This movie was worth admission (Maybe not the 3D price) just to see theMysteriousIslandin all it’s majesty. The Island adheres to some rule that was pulled out of thin air, where the small animals are all big and the big animals are all small. This means you have Elephants the size of cats and sharks the size of guppies. Likewise you also have bees the size of buffalo and electric eels the size of whales. The scene where they are riding the bees and being chased by birds may sound silly as hell but it looked awesome on the big screen. The 3D once again does not do very much to add to the film’s visual appeal. Maybe in an IMAX, but in the regular theater it’s a cheap thrill as always to grab more cash from us patrons who are most times left with no choice between 2D and 3D.
Overall I’d give the movie a 3 out of 5 grizzlies.
By no means were the story and acting achievements of any sort, but it more than made up for it with Michael Caine, The Rock and the visuals throughout the movie. It’s a simple movie and if you switch your brain to auto pilot you’ll do fine and maybe even have a bit of fun watching it!
Grizzly Bomb 