Journey 2: The Mysterious Island opens with the adorable Josh Hutcherson riding a motorcycle, evading the police, and crashing in a pool after having just broken into a satellite center to receive an encrypted message from his grandfather, who has been lost for goodness knows how many years. Cue Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and his dancing pecks to provide the fatherly figure that knows Morse code, understands 19th century adventure novel references, can tape three maps from three different books together in order to make one map of the Mysterious Island as written by Jules Vern, and then travels with his stepson to Palau to find the island. Confused? Well, all of that happened in the first five minutes, so I'd understand if you were confused also.
Sometimes movies like to employ impractical characters as plot devices to make the obviously unattainable attainable. Journey 2 has mastered this technique by having every character have relevant experience so that no matter what situation occurs, there is a way out. Also, Hutcherson's character, Sean, probably knows enough about everything in existence to have graduated with ecology, geology, and biology degrees already. In short, Journey 2 takes creative liberties on just about everything that could be regarded as somewhat realistic.
The story is centered on Hutcherson, a boy looking for his grandfather. After travelling to the Mysterious Island, the group finds the grandfather, but then quickly realizes that the island is sinking back into the ocean. The rest of the film is about their grand escape. Giant bugs (which I did not appreciate), miniature elephants, and the Lost City of Atlantis all make an appearance in this sinking deathtrap of a film. One moment of pure ridiculousness was when Hutcherson and The Rock create makeshift scuba gear out of plastic sandwich baggies and a snorkel. Yes, this is fantasy/adventure, but a little real-life physics would be appreciated so that the older folks in the audience didn't have to roll their eyes every 30 seconds.
Despite all of this, we must remember that the film is in fact for children, bringing up the question: why are a few respectable actors in it? Take Michael Caine, for example. Why on earth is Michael Caine in this movie? He has won two Oscars and been nominated four other times. It's inexplicable. Having The Rock in the movie is easily enough understood, as his being known for decent movies has tanked in recent years. Josh Hutcherson is another matter, having been in the first Journey movie, he probably couldn't get out of his contract. Lucky for him, he'll have the Hunger Games coming out in March to make up for this fail of a movie. Then we get to Vanessa Hudgens of High School Musical glory. Sorry, Hudge, but this is not going to improve your resume, and the few lines you did have showed nothing to the audience that could credit you as having actual acting chops.
From the family film perspective, one could argue that Journey 2 was cute and fun. I'll give it that, but for anyone looking for some J. Hutch action pre-Hunger Games, check out something else, for this movie portrays him as an annoying know-it-all. Even the graphics were nothing special: Finding Nemo, made 10 years prior, looks better than Journey's underwater sequences. Any laughs in the theatre were because of the ridiculous and not the comedy. The best part was when The Rock sung his rendition of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" on a ukulele, but that was about it in terms of genuine entertainment. Watch at your own risk of destroying the adventure genre for yourself.
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