Lucien, Cameras, Action!

Picking back up the storyline several years after the events in Journey to the Center of the Earth, the first noticeable factor is that Josh Hutcherson is the only holdover from the first film, making for as big a disconnect a sequel can have from it’s predecessor. The film opens with a rather arbitrary chase scene as Sean Anderson (Josh Hutcherson) flees the police after breaking into a satellite research center in his hometown of Dayton, Ohio. He is helped out of the sticky situation by his stepdad, Hank Parsons (Dwayne Johnson), who learn’s that Sean, a “Vernian” who attempts to track down the real life locations behind all the Jules Verne classics, was tracking a mysterious radio signal sent out by a fellow Vernian.

In an attempt to both bond with Sean and his wife, Sean’s mother, Liz (Kristin Davis), Hank helps decode the signal, which reveals the location of “The Mysterious Island,” as described in not only Jules Verne’s novel of the same name, but also Treasure Island and Gulliver’s Travels. Sean and Hank travel to Palau, where they meet up with a helicopter guide, Gabato (Luis Guzman), and his beautiful daughter (and instant love interest for Sean), Kailani (Vanessa Hudgens), who agree to take them to the island’s coordinates. As soon as they arrive to the coordinates, however, the helicopter enters a brutal storm and crashes through a vortex of sorts onto the island.

The group enters this island and right away notice just how incredibly strange, surreal, and dangerous it is. Before long the group runs into Sean’s long-lost grandfather, Alexander (Michael Caine), who saves them from a giant, angry lizard. They soon realize that this island is actually Atlantis (enter yet another unexplored mythological device), and that it will soon sink underwater again. Their savior? An old submarine left on the island by the famous Captain Nemo, but to reach it and save themselves they must race against time and cross the perilous island to safety.

Let me clarify that I was a fan of Journey to the Center of the Earth, although I feel like this film fails to recapture almost every aspect of what made the film successful plot. The-line here is both muddled, uninspired and pretty lackluster in general. While Dwayne Johnson is very likable, the characters here are very stock and unimportant. Luis Guzman is essentially here for comic relief, but overdoes it and becomes highly annoying and distracting. Vanessa Hudgens and Josh Hutcherson, meanwhile, don’t add much purpose or weight to the film other than the driving romantic interest to give the audience something more to cheer about as we see them move closer together far before they do themselves.