CLEANUP ON ISLE 2

The sequel to 2008’s Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D is titled Journey 2: The Mysterious Island. The pun built into the title is the whole of the movie’s verbal cleverness—it’s been a while since you’ve seen a movie, even a kids’ movie, with dialogue this corny & insipid. Fortunately, there are visual pleasures to make up for it.

Big, beefy Brendan Fraser being unavailable this time, the big beefy duties went to Dwayne Johnson, here the stepfather of the sullen kid (Josh Hutcherson), from the first film. The two of them end up stranded, along with a comic-relief helicopter pilot (Luis Guzman) & his cute daughter (Vanessa Hudgens), on an island of wonders somewhere near Palau, hidden behind a permanent waterspout. The boy’s adventurous grandfather is already there, played by Michael Caine—or, to put it more accurately, Michael Caine was paid to smile good-naturedly & speak the role’s lines.

The island was an inspiration, we are told, not only for Verne’s The Mysterious Island but also for Stevenson’s Treasure Island & apparently both Lilliput & Brobdingnag in Gulliver’s Travels—its residents include elephants the size of terriers & bees the size of ponies. Dumb as all this is, Journey 2 is perfectly watchable.

The CGI effects have a garish appeal, the 3D flourishes better than usual, the action all but nonstop. About the only time things slow down is for Johnson to sing “What a Wonderful World,” pleasantly enough, accompanying himself on the ukulele. There’s also a dreamy slow-motion shot of Hudgens falling through the air toward the jungle that verges on real, as opposed to kitschy, beauty.

So sure, take your kids, but also do them a favor: Before or after, show them (& yourself) the 1961 movie adaptation of Mysterious Island, with added Ray Harryhausen monsters. Beside it, this new film is punier than a Lilliputian elephant.

In theaters, by the way, Journey 2 is preceded by a Warner cartoon, Daffy’s Rhapsody, in which the manic-depressive waterfowl sings to Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, all while dodging Elmer Fudd’s bloodlust. Classical music has been good to the Looney Tunes—three of the best Bugs Bunny shorts, The Rabbit of Seville (1949), What’s Opera, Doc? (1957) & Long-Haired Hare (1948), are operatic send-ups—& this new film is probably the best of Warner’s post-Mel Blanc efforts, in no small part because…Blanc actually provides Daffy’s voice! The animation is a setting of a ‘50s-era children’s record by the peerless voice actor, & it’s quite wonderful to hear his irreplaceable tones filling the multiplexes.