A brilliant film that helped define a genre

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

A dismal kiddie-oriented science fiction adventure film which is utterly forgettable and lame in comparison to the 1959 fantasy classic with James Mason. Although the film sets off well with a foot firmly planted in seriousness and attempted realism, things degenerate so far that we end up getting silly monsters running around and fighting or befriending our team of B-movie heroes. Everything is bigger in this film in comparison to the original classic; there's a ludicrously large ship which resembles a spaceship (which leads one to beg the question, why wasn't this made simply as an outer-space epic?), there's a huge cast of explorers, a PC-friendly multi-ethnic group, most of whom are extraneous to the plot, and the special effects are more elaborate. In fact ALL of the explosions and backdrops are entirely computer-generated, and look cheap, fake and not-for-one-moment realistic. What happened to the matte paintings of the older days? At least they beat this pixelated rubbish hands down.There's a square-jawed and utterly BORING blond-haired hero guy, played by a worthless non-actor; a jock; a blonde-haired female lead who ISN'T a bimbo for a change but might as well be; a spectacled Chinese professor woman who doesn't actually do anything other than cook a bit of food; the tough black soldier-type who repeatedly goes off the deep end but pulls through in the end, and a female rock-climber who only seems to be around to display ample cleavage. The only actor of note in this mess is A STUDY IN TERROR's John Neville as the stereotyped upper-crust British guy (there aren't any guys around like him anymore, folks) who manages to scrape through without embarrassing himself too much, putting a tongue-in-cheek performance with plenty a raised eyebrow. Also appearing in brief cameos at the opening of the film are F. Murray Abraham as a bearded professor and Sam Raimi as his assistant.As the film sinks deeper and deeper into unrelenting silliness, more fantastic plot elements occur. There's a race of flat fish-type aliens that have glowing green eyes (achieved by someone shining a green-tinted light blub inside their eyes - yes, it's THAT cheap), a sickeningly cute Bigfoot-type hairy Yeti monster (the director made HARRY AND THE HENDERSONS, go figure) who joins the crew and is played by the guy who was Lurch in THE ADDAMS FAMILY movies, a stupid female computer head which floats around in a bubble, a race of troglodytes who are not nearly as interesting as the name would suggest, and to top it off an ugly monster humanoid which is kept alive through tubes and wakes up at the end of the movie to reveal that it has a human face - obviously they ran out of money for a mask then. The humanoid says things like "Invaders from the Overworld" and "For three millenia I have been left to suffer in this Hell" which gives you some idea of just how scary this guy is. To add insult to injury, there's no ENDING to this film either, instead just a "to be continued" type approach with our explorers jetting off to another adventure. I at least thought they would discover what happened to Abraham or escape back to the surface, but the credits just roll suddenly and leave you incredulous, as does much of this appalling television movie.

Since the early 80s, it seems the only way to convey a "bad guy" in a sci-fi movie is to use a guttural, speaking-while-burping, type voice most commonly associated with Dr. Claw in the cartoon version of "Inspector Gadget". That voice is SO PLAYED now that I literally have to just stop whatever is using it and walk away because I find it so annoying and irritating. This movie had a chance, albeit a tiny one, for me as I enjoy sci-fi with a good larf to it but that chance evaporated as soon as the "bad guy" made his appearance and sounded like Dr. Claw. It's weak, stupid, trite, LAZY and awful. NO MORE DOCTOR CLAW PLEASE!!!! Please, God, PLEASE!! LOL What a star studded cast too. Justina Evans, who's been associated with all things silly, was a nice add. Poor John Neville, who must have rued the day he signed the contract for this A-Bomb, could have saved this. And my favorite, Tim Russ from "Star Trek: Voyager" - who also could have saved this.Why did this potential serial fail? First, because they went with a script that had no ending! Even if you plan on sequels or an entire TV series, the big "crisis" that draws the audience in has to have some kind of resolution with an obvious hint that more such adventures are to come. This movie just dead-ended with plot holes everywhere you could drive a truck through. Second, the special effects were just god-awful. "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" was out at this exact same time and even with a different nose prosthesis for each species separating out the various space characters (Note to Star Trek, be more creative please! Tentacles shouldn't be out of the question), the special effects in DS9 were infinitely better than this piece of dog doo! Honestly - drooling, fanged-manta-ray puppets?! C'MON! Last, BORING! This was so god awful boring and silly and hokey and just inspidly stupid it never should have seen a millisecond on air. Worst movie EVER! (And I sat through all of "Howard the Duck" - IN THE THEATRE!) You know what's really sad? To date, the 1959 version of this title still sets the high bar. Even the most recent production wasn't as interesting to me as the original. Sad.I gladly give this a 1. They got it the old fashioned way, they EARNED it. *grin*

In the wake of the dreadful 1980s mistreatment of the Jules Verne classic by Cannoon, next few years, several other studios considered making movies of Journey to the Center Of the Earth, but the only result was further mishandling. On February 28, 1993, NBC premiered a new two-hour television movie entitled JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH, which had even less relation to the novel than the Cannon duo. The modern plot related how an enthusiastic university professor, Harlech (F. Murray Abraham), dreams of discovering enormous caverns beneath the surface by traveling into the shaft of an active volcano. However, after entering the nuclear-powered craft he has invented for such travel, it apparently explodes upon the first attempt to descend. His nephew carries on with the idea, forging an uncomfortable alliance with a wealthy industrialist to build a new, improved craft, which succeeds in arriving underground and conveying its passengers through mysterious domains. This JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH is, in fact, more of a remake of UNKNOWN WORLD, building on Edgar Rice Burroughs's mole concept to solve the most problematic notion of the Verne story for modern audiences--how explorers could walk to the Earth's center--by offering an outer space-style craft to expedite their journey, while still pausing outside the ship for the encounters with early humans and primitive animals that Verne had included.Direction by William Dear was capable, especially considering the trite script by David Mickey Evans and Robert Gunter; producer was John Ashley, with Dear, Evans, and Dale De La Torre as executive producers. Actually, the new television picture, hastily completed and broadcast with a minimum of publicity, consisted of two pilot episodes of a projected series. As a result, the film concludes in an open-ended fashion, as the craft goes forward to continue finding new realms (in episodes presumably never filmed).Many of the elements contained in JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH were conventions of science fiction. Pollution threatens to render the surface uninhabitable, and the subterranean world offers the possibility of a new home for humankind. Horrific crawling manta-ray style monsters and a missing-link race of early man called troglodytes provide further danger. In an update of 2001--A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968), there is a Hal-style onboard computer that not only has a personality, but a holographic face of its own as well. An evil Darth Vader-type creature, kept alive through artificial means and reminiscent of the STAR WARS trilogy, tries to thwart the explorers. (A brief shot as he falls into the lava shows him wearing the same ring as the nephew gave Harlech before his apparent death, perhaps indicating Harlech was transformed.) Both this creature and the expedition's scientist, played by John Neville (in the only dignified role), are trying to complete a lost computer chip puzzle that forms a book of knowledge from the time of Atlantis. A lovable Tibetan abominable snowman joins the group, which also includes other stereotypical representatives meant to form a microcosm of humanity: a strong female spelunker, two women scientists, an explosives expert, and an angry African-American.

This movie at first looked like the simplistic movie that could be entertaining on a Saturday afternoon. One never thought it would be great, but the hope was there for a pleasant if not simple few hours.This movie could not even achieve those simple explanations. The movie started with some good scenes and some interest. But after a bit the acting seemed to grow much worse. The creatures looked sort of like people in gorilla suits - who also seemed to be guilty of bad acting. The Plot seemed to quickly drift downward into filling up time. Awful. It is hard to imagine a movie that is not even good enough to take a nap to, but this one seems to hit that level.