Brendan Fraser as a scientist of any description seems about as likely as Einstein moonlighting a professional wrestler... yet, the premise of this remake of Journey to the Centre of the Earth is that he's a professor of geophysics. The long and short of this by the numbers action remake is... by the numbers.

Brendan Fraser's nephew comes for a visit... his mother brings a box of Brendan's brother's stuff. He disappeared ten years ago and blah blah blah. Fraser is basically trying to keep on the crazy work of his brother and as it turns out, he thought that the Journey to the Centre of the Earth was in fact, a factual account... which gives the film free license to copy many features of it verbatim, albeit with fancier special effects.

So, Fraser discovers geological conditions or something like that are identical to those when his brother disappeared he decides to take his nephew off to him with Iceland. They find the daughter of some guy that knew his brother... blah, blah, blah. Naturally, they end up trapped underground and after a run away mine car ride - they fall through the ground and end up... IN THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH!

It really feels like they rushed it... obviously, they couldn't have made this a serious exploration... because, well - it's Brendan Fraser. Having him head something serious AND scientific... people would have probably laughed up their internal organs. So, it's something of a down and dirty, no-frills wait until they get TO THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH! As it takes about 20 minutes to get to this point, there's not a great deal of time to waste on things like characterisation... because by science, this film will be the mandatory 90 minutes or it won't be anything!

So, really - there's just a progression from one CGI fest to another... but then, really - that's what this film was based around. A special effects extravaganza with Fraser screaming and hitting things a lot - presumably so we'd forget he was a scientist. We get glowy birds flying around, the giant mushrooms, the sea (with plenty of fishies)... but this doesn't really make any sense... The temperature is climbing and it's established this is what killed Fraser's dear ol' brother... yet, there's plenty of life in here... so presumably it can just magically survive temperatures hot enough to boil water...

Anyway, we get some carnivorous plants, floating rocks... and then a giant magical geyser that helps the team escape. Not to mention the mandatory facilitation of possible sequels.

Not particularly awe inspiring but you can't fault it in the sense that... it does pretty much exactly what it says on the tin. It's 90 minutes of brainless action involving Brendan Fraser... that maybe a redundancy but still, it's what's to be expected and it's what is delivered. No one will win any Oscars for this film but it's an inoffensive way to pass an hour and a half between now and death...