JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH (1993) ** Ah, it's good to have a back-up toggle when you're living on telemetry. Embattled F. Murray Abraham demonstrates, amongst molten lava, nonbelievers, and a craft that looks like a bullet with a burr on its butt, that he's an actor of the magnitude to convince us that inner-earth exploration is a viable concept in the 21st century. Then wisely exits the film after five minutes. No matter, he was probably just worried that Mozart was going to come kick his ass again. The film admittedly goes downhill in the absence of an appearance by Amadeus, but Jeri Kelter's subterranean sets are first rate. They look like something the smart kids who don't study might set up in the Bat Cave (except for the glass beaker marked, in part, LSD, which looks decidedly Deadhead in origin, which is probably same kids after all, now that I think on it). The character archetypes are also so wisely selected that it doesn't really matter that none of them are any good. What matters is that even with Bigfoot and giant eels with luminous eyes, and troglodytes and machine-guns and babes and scientists and professors and mystical central earth theory...William Dear can't quite find anything to hang a plot on. Don't tell me about Jules Verne, he didn't write this stuff. He might have enjoyed it though, and so will you, in proportion to anesthesia administered.
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