Review No.75: Journey 2 The Mysterious Island

So it's time to pick up the world tour once again as we journey to Palau of all places or in fact do we journey 2 it? Yes the pacific island seemed to have been randomly picked as the start point for the family film Journey 2 The Mysterious Island which is a loose sequel to Journey to the Center of the Earth as both starred Josh Hutcherson as Sean as well as both being based around Jules Verne novels. While the first film saw Sean team up with his uncle Brendan Fraser this time it is The Rock that fills in the alpha male lead as Sean's stepfather Hank as the pair go to find the mysterious island as well as Sean's long-lost grandfather Alexander played by Michael Caine. To get to the island from Palau the pair charter a dodgy looking helicopter driven by Luis Guzman's Latino chancer accompanied by his daughter Kailani who of course Sean's eyes are immediately drawn to especially seeing as she wears a low cut top for the majority of the film. When the quartet get to the island they find a place where large animals are small while small insects are large and once they've found Alexander they realise that the island is sinking with the only way to get off it is to find Captain Nemo's legendary submarine. Along the way life lessons are learnt as Sean learns to trust Hank and see him more as a paternal figure in his life while Kailani also struggles to make her father understand that she wants a life different from his. Obviously the end is crammed with people running quickly, CGI being sprinkled liberally and a third film in the franchise hinted to.

I feel that there are some films on this list that are just not made for me and Journey 2 The Mysterious Island is one of them however I can appreciate that it does hit their target market quite well. In fact to an extent it did remind me of some of the old school family films that I liked when I was younger and it does go out of its way to appeal to the whole family. There are the giant-bugs for the boys, the love story for the girls, The Rock flexing his pecs for the mums and there's even something for the dads in Vanessa Hudgens' ever expanding cleavage. Though Hutcherson impressed much more in The Hunger Games he is still good playing the average teen here while The Rock is a game leading man doing the aforementioned pecs flexing with aplomb while also later singing and playing the ukulele at the same time. However the film is stolen by Guzman and Caine both playing it for laughs and succeeding throughout with the former in particular impressing in a film whose genre he rarely appears in. Personally I found there was far too much CGI in a family film that didn't need it to survive while the love story looks like it has been tagged on by the producers at the last minute in order to appeal to the girls as well as the boys. As I said before this didn't really appeal to me but I think it's certainly interesting enough to appeal to a mainly young crowd and therefore it has done the job it has set out to do.

Verdict: A perfectly likeable family film with too much CGI and a weak romantic subplot gets a score from me of 6/10