Journey To The Center Of The Earth (1993)

Believe it or not, I actually watched a worse movie than Norbit this weekend.

This "re-working" of Jules Verne's classic was on TV over the weekend and I had the misfortune to watch it. There are three words that describe the experience:

Sweet Zombie Jesus.

How bad is it? Weeeeell.....let's put it this way. It was made in 1993, and IMDB has no memorable quotes, trivia or goofs listed for it. So I'll give you them all now:

Memorable quotes: There are none. Everyone is playing characters whose motivation can be explained through interpretive mime and/or Duplo blocks.

Trivia: Kevin Saxon survived watching this by knawing his own arm off.

Goofs: So many. So so many..... I seriously doubt there's a single scene that doesn't contain a technical error, a scientific fallacy or a craped up special effect. Here's the highlights:

• They blow up the same lip of the volcano crater twice.
• They have switches labelled "Vales Open" and "Valves Closed" sitting next to each other and every command on board requires both of them to be pressed at the same time.
• Landing the "flying submarine" is a reversed effect of taking off. This of course means that the jet engines, instead of expelling their mighty thrust in the form of smoke to lift the behemoth off the ground, are in fact sucking smoke into their outlet openings like there's no tomorrow, much like a junkie with a bong.
• The same holographic image is used to plot the craft's position and destination several times. The craft never seems to move any closer to it's target.

General Annoyances

The protagonist is never really revealed, nor are his motives nor for that matter his origins. His obsession with the artifact the crew have is only explained in the last five minutes of the film, he toys with them for no reason at all and while being very fragile away from his life support system, the scriptwriters apparently decided to kill him by dropping him into lava, just to be sure.

The main hero doesn't do what any sane person would do. Ever. At any point in the movie. Seriously. When the billionaire financing the project steals his design for the machine, any sane person would sue his ass, or at least knock him into the middle of next week. His choice of crew consists of a collection of volatile personalities who don't get on (quel surprise!).
At one point he announces that he wants to find out who has been on their back since they landed, meaning the protagonist, and while we the audience know he exists, there's not logical reason why the character should know or even suspect anyone has been after them.

No-one dies. I know, I know, but it's a journey to the centre of the Earth! Someone's supposed to die. It's a rule!

They introduce an AI computer (with a female appearance, naturally.) for no good reason. She fulfils no plot point, and only serves to annoy when it is "proclaimed" that the pilot has faster reflexes than she does. To steal a phrase from Star Wars (since the film steals a lot of its dialogue): Good against the living's one thing, but good against a computer? I thought she looked a little like Justina Vail, who played Olga, the Russian expert on Seven Days and then quit acting, until I looked it up and found out it was in fact Justina Vail.

They introduce the concept of a universal translator to understand a creature they find, a device which was never mentioned before this and is disposed of in about five minutes when the creature learns English. I nearly had a surprise visit from my breakfast at this point.

The plot has no direction. Things happen for no reason, plot points are forgotten five minutes after they're mentioned. One character exists solely for a spelunking scene, and I honestly think the scriptwriter forgot about her for the rest of the film, because she has precious few other lines.

They get lost down there in the end! They have a sonic blaster on the nose of the craft, a weapon we are assured (and shown) can blast through anything. Why the smeg they don't just aim up and start blastin' is anyone's guess. And if you're thinking that maybe they're worried about falling debris or damaging a structure at the surface, then don't. It isn't that sort of film.
It seems to be a set up for a TV series which, thank the maker, never got made.

Redeeming features

One and a half. It contains the very hot Farrah Forke, who played Mason Drake in "The New Adventures of Superman" . Why Clark ever chose Lois over Mason is beyond me. Mason was hotter, smarter, more committed to a relationship with him and less high maintenance. Plus I'm pretty sure she would have put out.
Ahem....I seem to have wandered a little off topic.

And the other half point goes to seeing what Tim Russ did before being Tuvok in Star Trek: Voyager (although he's also played bit parts in The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, sort of like how all the actors on CSI: Miami and CSI: New York turn up in repeats of CSI.)

Scored on the Catwoman scale:
A wonking 9/10

Yes, that bad. I honestly can't understand why anyone would make this movie.

OQ:
We can't trust him. What if he's a man eater?
I'm a vegetarian.
That's even worse...

Just to give you an idea of how bad the dialogue is.