The 3D effects of this spine-jarring yarn largely offset the hammy, over-the-top nonacting method practiced by Brendan Fraser to provide quality family entertainment - as long as you don’t mind your family seeing perilous attacks by carniverous fish, dinosaurs, plummets to the center of the earth, molten lava, and cave-ins.

Some kidding aside, this is a fun movie, a reminder of how escapist movies used to be - that is, not overhyped balls of crapitude. We didn’t hear much about this redo of Journey to the Center of the Earth, not with so many other widely anticipated movies coming out this summer. And this version lives down to the lack of hype. It simply is what it is, which is a lazy way of saying it’s amusing as long as you don’t expect it to be, you know, terrifyingly awesome.

First, a note on the 3D effects. Not all showings are in 3D, because 3D projectors are expensive. If you’re unfortunate and can’t find a 3D theater showing this, my advice is to skip it entirely - or perhaps watch it at home on your big-screen TV anyway. The truth is that once you strip away the effects, this is less Raiders of the Lost Ark (which it desperately wants to be) and more Alan Quartermain and the Lost City of Gold (don’t remember it? wonder why). It’s like watching Sheena of the Jungle without the jiggle factor. It’s got a main story thread - they must escape to the surface - and little else save for the great 3D effects. Another quick note: I don’t know much about 3D technology, but I did notice that when an object was presented in 3D (say, a yo-yo darting toward the audience), everything else in the scene was in soft focus. I don’t know if this is an artifact of the technology or if it was by design (i.e., diverting attention to solely the 3D), but it’s not good that I noticed it.

The plot is straightforward. Fraser plays a Trevor, science teacher whose brother disappeared seven years earlier while researching tectonics. His widow drops off their son to Trevor so they can male bond, or something, and soon they’re off adventuring, looking for clues to the brother/father’s disappearance. They wind up in Iceland, where they figuratively hook up with a lovely mountain guide named Hannah (Anita Briem), whose father had been working with Trevor’s brother. And off they go to check on a seismic reader on a remote mountaintop, when a freak lightning storm traps them in a cave, which leads down, down, down, and eventually they’re at the center of the Earth.

Fraser has been gunning for these kind of roles for a while now, but here he’s even less swarthy and manly than he was in the Mummy movies - he’s more like Link, the caveman he played in Encino Man. Well, he’s smart, and he’s got courage, but Indy Jones he’s not. In fact, he screws up so often early on that Hannah has to keep saving his life. That’s gotta sting. So Fraser doesn’t exactly fit the hero mold here, but what’s more he can’t show emotion properly. He either delivers his lines in a flat monotone or pushes the needle in the other direction and camps up a storm. I half expected him to look at the (nonexistent) sky and wail, “WHYYYYYYYY?”

But certainly the big deal here is the effects, and many of them are especially awe inspiring. The movie lends itself rather well to 3D effects, what with the plummeting and the running and things flying at our heroes and stalking them and trying to stomp on them or eat them. It’s good to see such creative use of 3D effects, because the better these outlying special movies are, the more likely we’ll get to see more 3D in the future. It’s expensive to make these, and theaters have to be specially equipped to show them, so unless there’s a huge demand, there’s no real reason for studios to make a lot of 3D movies.

Journey to the Center of the Earth is based on the eponymous Jules Verne novel, and the novel itself figures prominently in the movie - pretty meta, huh? Yes, the book’s probably better than the movie, so let’s dispense with that, but even so, this isn’t a bad adaptation. In fact, it’s kind of clever in spots; Trevor’s brother discovered, apparently, that the adventures and exciting places in Verne’s book actually occurred and do exist, so Trevor, Hannah, and Sean (the nephew) can follow the book to see what perils await them. It’s more of an homage to Verne’s work than a ripoff of them, which is nice.  Oh, and the movie even mentions Vernians, people who (in real life, not just this movie) do believe that Verne’s novels are really nonfiction travelogues.

Watch this movie in 3D, and you’re sure to ooh and aah and OH MY GOODNESS GRACIOUS at various moments of impending doom. Journey to the Center of the Earth is imaginative, fun-packed, and a real treat; it’s just that there’s not much else there other than the effects, which somewhat blunts the appeal. Watch this movie in 2D, and it’ll be just another two-bit B action movie with pithy one liners.

***

Fifty years in the future, the sun is dying. Oddly enough, this has nothing to do with either the sun’s own aging process or the effect of human activity - it’s a completely natural, if not wholly explainable, problem. So how do we Earthlings propose to solve this problem? By nuking the bejeezus out of the sun, thus reigniting it and restoring it to its literal and figurative splendor.

Sounds simple, right? Fly on out to the sun, drop a huge bomb (the mass of Long Island, New York), and zip on home. Piece of cake. Only the same mission was undertaken, and the crew from that spaceship was never heard from again. Now Icarus 2, armed with his megahuge bomb, must avoid the mistakes of Icarus 1, without knowing what befell their predecessors, much in the same way that Dr. Floyd and his crew traveled to Jupiter to find out what happened an earlier mission (Discovery); and what did they find? That Man was not meant to meddle in such affairs. (Cue maniacal laughter here.)

One way in which Sunshine works is that the crew members are never portayed as supermen; they’re simply astronauts and scientists, and each of the actors is completely believable in the role. You’d almost expect this to be an all-American crew (it’s not) with an American manly man as its commander (the captain is Japanese). But the personalities of the crew members are intentionally stunted so that the audience can focus on the mission. That is, the feeling of anxiety mixed with terror. We at home feel just as unsure about the mission - if it fails, everyone on Earth dies - as the crew does.

The movie is exceptionally well cast, too. Cillian Murphy (Red Eye, 28 Days) is Capa, the ship’s physicist; he’s morose and pensive, and he’s the only one who knows how to deploy the bomb (euphemistically called “the payload”). Michelle Yeoh (Tomorrow Never Dies, Memoirs of a Geisha) is Corazon, the ship’s biologist; she’s in charge of the oxygen garden (i.e., the greenhouse). Without the plants, there’d be no oxygen to live. Then there’s engineer Mace, pilot Cassie, and psychologist Searle, to name a few others. Each performance is low key and empathic; you don’t have characters suddenly going crazy in the depths of space, as happens in most other sci-fi movies of this stripe. Again, more focus on plot development than on preening psychoses.

But even so, there are conficts on board Icarus 2: Mace and Capa clearly don’t like each other, but there’s also a conflict that’s a little reminiscent (derivative) of 2001. Without revealing anything crucial, I can explain that although the ship’s computer does countermand a direct human order, such obstinance is not due to conflicting orders. So you can rest easy that this isn’t a ripoff of Clarke’s masterpiece.

Director Danny Boyle and cinematographer Alwin H. Kuchler succeed in presenting a jaw-dropping array of sun-ripened majesty. Not to put too fine of a point on it, but they allow the viewer to get a sense of the overwhelming mass and brilliance of the sun without the need for the suspension of disbelief. For example, the Icarus 2 has an observation room from which crew can view the sun head on - through strong, strong filters. Even with those filters on, Dr. Searle experiences a bath of light that envelops him both physically and mentally - he’s never quite the same after observing the sun, and his exposure informs his character for the rest of the movie.

Now, although the movie had a science consultant advising them on the practical aspects of the ship’s mission, there IS some suspension of disbelief. For example - a bomb with the mass of Long Island? Into the sun? Come on, that won’t be more than a raindrop in the Pacific. And how can the ship be so strong and resistant to heat that it can get close enough to deploy the payload? Wouldn’t it just burn up?

As with the best sci-fi, Sunshine asks more questions than it answers (not including the rhetorical ones I just asked). It teeters on the edge of classic science fiction but ultimately waits patiently on the plateau - or asteroid, if you will - of a near-classic. It’s shiny, it’s pretty, and it’s thoughtful, but its mystical ending might seem a little like a cop out to some.

***

First, the Bogart Bracket.

1 Pitt (40%) vs. 12 Rickman (60%)
2 Willis (60%) vs. 11 Reeves (40%)
3 Jolie (80%) vs. 10 Quaid (20%)
4 Clooney (78%) vs. 9 Roberts (22%)
5 Ford (60%) vs. Washington (40%)
6 Depp (80%) vs. Blanchett (20%)

Willis and Jolie will enjoy a round off, and our second-round matchups will be as follows:

Next, the Wayne Bracket.

1 De Niro (33%) vs. 12 Jones (67%)
2 Jackson (78%) vs. 11 Downey, Jr. (22%)
3 Hanks (78%) vs. 10 Kidman (22%)
4 Crowe (56%) vs. 9 Cage (44%)
5 Cruise (22%) vs. 8 Damon (78%)
6 Williams (22%) vs. 7 Freeman (78%)

Jackson and Hanks can take it easy, leaving us with these matchups:

The Spiderwick Chronicles, based on a series of children’s fantasy books, will never be confused with its cleverer brethren, like the Harry Potter or Golden Compass books and movies. The movie is likeable enough, with two appealing performances by Freddie Highmore (playing twins of different dispositions, of course), but it’s steadfastly stupid in some parts and offers only stereotypically cardboard characterizations.

The Grace family - mom, older sister, twin brothers - have relocated from New York to the rural Spiderwick estate. Mom’s separating from dad, and not everyone in the family’s taking it too well - Jared, the troublemaking teen, is sullen, disinterested, and angry. So right from the get-go we get plenty of interfamily dynamics that we’d just as soon do without - mom yelling at kids, sister Mallory smacking Jared around, bookish-twin Simon meekly accepting his role as doormat, that sort of thing. Everyone’s sort of obnoxious. Which is kind of what you expect from a book about British kids, like the Narnia movies.

At any rate, the defiant Jared stumbles upon a book written by his great-grandfather Arthur Spiderwick, a book that details the amazing - and dangerous - world right under their collective noses, surrounding the creepy and mysterious Victorian mansion they’ve moved into (Spiderwick’s house). All of the secrets of these hidden worlds are contained in this book, it turns out, which begs the question of why it was written, since much of the movie involves people trying to get it and rule the world, or something.

When Jaren shows his find to his family, naturally no one believes him, not even his twin brother. This is because in movies, the Bad Kid must never be believed about anything, and everything is immediately his fault, no matter how outlandish. Merely opening the book causes bad things to happen in the Grace house, including the sudden growth of Mallory’s hair, which ties itself to her bedpost. Yep, gotta be her brother’s fault.

And as in many other movies, first no one believes Jared, then one, then two, then Mom herself - but only when evidence is staring them in the face. The lesson here, to the little kids watching the movie, is that one should be careful what one says to one’s elders, because no one’s gonna believe you. Cute, huh?

Turns out that Spiderwick was borne away by sylphs (fairies), and his little daughter Lucy pined away for years awaiting his return - only to be committed to a sanitarium. Oh, but she left a legacy in the house, which is stocked with lots of salt, tomato sauce, and honey, all to help and combat these fantastical creatures. There’s even a wide circle around the house that protects it and its inhabitants from danger.

Which of course brings me to a particularly dumb aspect of the story, one that I can mention here. Inevitably, those creatures that desire the book launch an attack on the house. Jared and his family know the attack’s coming, and they prepare. But no one thinks of expanding the circle! Geez, they have hours to figure this stuff out, and if they took all that salt they have in the house and widened the circle, they would have bought plenty of time. Man, given enough time, they could have put the circle around the goblins’ lair!

This is a rare fantasy story that pays barely any attention to its own mythological elements, which are really the bread and butter of any fantasy tale. Instead the focus is more on the family dynamic, and how no one believes anyone. And plus, cmon - the older sister just happens to be a world-class fencer? In one scene, she practices with good-twin Simon - and you’ll note that neither of them are wearing any padding or equipment, and the sword is sharp, not blunt. I’m no fencing expert, but I’m pretty sure that’s not how it’s supposed to work, especially if you’re a teenager.

I can appreciate how the mom (Mary-Louise Parker) is trying hard to keep her kids together after having left her husband - and Jared doesn’t make it easy for her - but she’s so prone to jump to conclusions that my sympathy for her quickly dissipated.

And lucky Freddie Highmore! You know you’ve hit it big when you get to play twins. And in keeping with tradition, the twins are nothing alike. He follows in the footsteps of the legendary Jean-Claude Van Damme here, as well as most soap-opera stars. Although it’s a movie that seems like it should be about the Grace kids, Jared is front and center, as timid Simon is shunted aside almost entirely.

The Spiderwick Chronicles is probably best for those less-discerning single-digit munchkins; anyone over six will be bored, and there aren’t enough jokes to sustain anyone else’s interest.

**1/2

So! You can vote again! I know, the one or two of you reading this are so happy now.

Bogart Bracket
Wayne Bracket

Oh, well. Please try voting later, folks. I am not gonna close Round 1 until we have at least ten votes in for each of the matchups.

And now we’ll do the other half of the tourney, the Wayne Bracket. And for you kids out there, no, it’s not referring to Lil’ Wayne. Or Wayne Gretzky. Or Wayne Brady!

To sum up: You can use whatever criteria you want; just pick whomever appeals to you more. That’s really what popularity contests are all about, after all.

Robert De Niro was the seventies. Then he took it easy for a while, and then BAM, he was in almost everything. Man’s still a great, great actor, but try not to remind him that he played Fearless Leader in a Rocky and Bullwinkle movie. Tommy Lee Jones, on the other hand, is still hot and hip and whatnot, thanks to In the Valley of Elah and No Country for Old Men.

Oh, no! Now we get to the nitty gritty, right? Sam Jackson, who seemingly never turns down a role, versus Junior Robert Downey, who’s enjoying yet another career resurgence. Aside from Tony Stark, Downey was awesome in the lesser-seen A Scanner, Darkly. Jackson has fought snakes and the Empire. Oh, and blew off Marvin’s head in Pulp Fiction. (Or was that Travolta?)

This doesn’t seem fair. Hanks has multiple Oscars and always turns in a well-received performance. Kidman is an elegant actress, and I think she’s outstanding, but… I dunno, Forrest Gump versus that crazy lady from The Others?

Another tough one, but the reason Cage is seeded so low is that he can suck BADLY at times. Nostrils flaring, he’ll have this crazed look that is supposed to say “emotion-packed” but instead looked like “coke-addicted.” Crowe is almost always flawless, and with meaty roles he flourishes: Gladiator, A Beautiful Mind, American Gangster (in which he outacted Denzel).

Time was, Cruise would be seeded #1 or #2, but now he’s almost a walking punchline. I say almost because his movies still seem to do reasonably well. We’ll see that put to the test when Valkyrie comes out. I like Damon in the Bourne movies, but then he has to go and suck in the Ocean’s films and Syriana.

And finally, the close 6-7 matchup. Freeman did play God, after all. Twice. Williams is like Al Pacino (Mr. Not Good Enough to Appear in this Tournament) - awesome or hammy, with little in between. Patch Adams, Bicentennial Man… but also Insomnia and Good Will Hunting, not to mention Good Morning, Vietnam.

It’s time for the first annual Frothy Ruminations Popularity Tournament Poll!

It’s simple. Who ya got? And by that I mean, which of the two in a given bracket do you like more than the other? You can use whatever criteria you want; just pick whomever appeals to you more. That’s really what popularity contests are all about, after all.

Now. Here’s how I seeded them: randomly. Okay, maybe not entirely true. What I did was take a look at the popular tags in the Tag Cloud on the Frothy Ruminations home page, then lop off enough so that I had 24 actors and actresses. Then I just ranked them subjectively by popularity.

Sure, some of the 1 seeds are gonna coast through the first round, but there may be some surprises. Just like the NCAA’s March Madness, as well as just about any other bracket thingy that people do.

There are two sides of the tournament, each with 12 names. Each side is ranked 1 through 12.

Oh, and if you don’t like the rankings? Let me know. I won’t do anything about it, of course, but I encourage debate. You can abuse me if you like. Or you could just ask me nicely why the $%^$^$#$$!!!!! #####! I put Angelina Jolie at #3.

Let’s name the brackets, too. First up, we have the Bogart Bracket:

Pitt’s moved from pretty boy to meaty roles. He can do blockbusters like the Ocean’s movies, or he can do dramas like Babel. He’s turned into a great actor who is wildly popular, too. Rickman’s a dark horse - you see him in a lot of things as a bit player, like the Harry Potter films, or Sweeney Todd, or even Hitchhiker’s Guide.

Old guard versus new here. I like Bruce more than I like Keanu, but I gotta admit Ted Theodore Logan has surpassed his B&T showing. I liked him in Speed, like everyone else. He’s not terrible, just one note most of the time - but I would recommend The Lake House for romantic supernatural comedy thrillers.

Angelina, is there nothing she can’t do? Adopt kids, birth twins, act. One of her worst performances gave her the Oscar for Girl, Interrupted. And she was woefully underused in The Good Shepherd.  But then there was Mr. and Mrs. Smith, plus this year’s Wanted. Dennis Quaid’s still a poor man’s Harrison Ford. The Day after Tomorrow? Frequency? But then Vantage Point and Traffic.

Ah, these two fast friends facing off. Clooney, like Pitt, can do comedy and drama, and he’s pretty while being talented. Has Roberts’ ship sailed? She’s not bad, she’s just not the ingenue we all want to remember her being in Notting Hill, Pretty Woman, and so on. I didn’t like Clooney in Syriana, but he was okay in The Good German - and of course he’s a quintessential Danny Ocean for the aughts. He seems very willing to take risks.

You’re thinking, “Harrison Ford is WAY too highly ranked here.” Dude has been in a buttload of best-grossing movies ever, so don’t begrudge him. The new Indy Jones isn’t bad at all, although it’s no Raiders. Guy also gave us Han Solo, and he was damn good as Jack Ryan, so don’t blaspheme against him! Then you have Denzel, who can play bad and good - American Gangster, Training Day, Inside Man, The Hurricane..

And now we come to the closest matchup, the 6 and 7 seeds. Half of you will take Depp, half will take Blanchett, and another half can’t do math so good. Tough matchup, isn’t it? Both can play quirky and sexy. Both can play leads or supports. One has an Oscar.

Dunno why this is on the Sporting News blog, but what the hey. Anyway, I can’t argue with the choices here. Although from Princess Bride, I’d likely take Montoya versus the six-fingered man near the end, not Montoya versus Westley. Bah!

Only ten questions. You should be able to ace this one, folks.