Cinema review: Journey 2: The mysterious island

Another adventurous journey for our heroes, this time to a mysterious island.

This is the follow up to 2008 “Journey to the center of the earth”. That movie was a surprise breakout achieving an impressive box office just by being a very fun light hearted adventure, with a little help from a very good 3D. The success of Journey number 2, with surpassed number 1, promoted it officially to franchise status with a third part in development right now.

They changed practically all the major players involved, only Josh Hutcherson returns as the annoying brat, but the producers understood perfectly what made the first movie tick and replicated it on a much bigger scale.

If you are an hardcore Vernian (wow so you really exist!) this movie is not for you. It takes so many liberties with the source material that its relationship with Jules Verne “The mysterious island” is just a vague “Inspired by”.

Actually the real source material, if we must point at something, is the big adventure / monster movies of the 40s. “The land that time forgot” and its ilk with their tales of far away isles, always in the southern seas, inhabitated by monsters and littered by the ruins of ancient civilizations are clearly the blueprints here.

This movie is that rare beast which not only is fun but is unashamedly so. How many summer blockbusters pays lip service to stuff like “character development”, “relationships” and “drama”, do it very badly and just manage to sink into boring depths? Nothing of that sort here, just pure unadulterated fun while our heroes jump from set piece to set piece.

Of course to do this you need people capable to hold it together with very little material and the producer got two standout performers.

One is The Rock who is finally recovering from that career suicide that was “The tooth Fairy”. Nobody can say that he is a particularly gifted actor but in doing what he does here, basically playing a funny version of his on screen persona, he is pitch perfect.

The other is arguably one of the best actors ever, sir Michael Caine, who at 79 years old got more charisma while riding a giant wasp that a legion of Channing Tatums.

Making a real popcorn movie is actually much harder than it look, this one is the best that we had in a while, recommended viewing for a fun evening.