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75The movie flies by pleasantly, and is then instantly forgettable. Perhaps Jules Verne can explain the science of that.
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63The second installment in a likable family franchise, Journey 2: The Mysterious Island makes a nice case to your kids that reading books is a good idea.
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63It's a thoroughly family-friendly film, with a subtle message about the importance of father figures. Don't expect anything resembling believability, but enjoy the blend of strikingly colorful visuals and banter between odd couple Johnson and Caine, which combine for a mild escapist treat.
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63Yes, The Mysterious Island is everything a 12-year-old boy could want – endless adventure involving a reckless adolescent hero, with a pretty girl in a clinging T-shirt around to watch him struggle.
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63This is transcendently goofy. It isn't a "good" movie in the usual sense (or most senses), but it is jolly and good-natured, and Michael Caine and Dwayne Johnson are among the most likable of actors.
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60If there's a book-loving adventuress or adventurer in your house younger than 10, Journey 2: The Mysterious Island provides a lighthearted break from the death-obsessed "Harry Potter" franchise and other literary but limp adventures like the "Narnia" films and "The Lightning Thief."
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Feb 7, 201260A fun though rarely funny family adventure whose lively special effects compensate somewhat for actors who largely sleepwalk through their roles.
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Jan 30, 201260Massively throwaway, but funnier and more likable than the first entry. Mainly that's due to an A-list pairing that's as inspired as it is demented.
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Feb 10, 201250For all the special effects – like its predecessor, this is in 3-D – the film coasts on Johnson being charming and Caine being Caine.
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50With cheesy-looking effects including a ride on the backs of giant bees and dubious literary references, Journey 2: The Mysterious Island comes dangerously close to giving books, never mind 3-D, a bad name.
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50This kind of movie is all about the special effects. They start out great - cool helicopter crash, very convincing giant lizard - but grow more amateurish as the film goes along, with a flight sequence on giant bees proving particularly clunky.
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50Surrogate fathers and family values are at the foreground, making the film a quick sell to parents - especially as it boasts the added value of literary roots.
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Feb 9, 201250This is a family movie, after all -- but you'll have to sit through some abrasively broad, unfunny exchanges to get there. Dialogue, alas, is the kind of thing that can't be enhanced by the wearing of 3-D glasses.
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Feb 8, 201250The look of the film is impressive, as are the effects. Overall, however, it's a big, loud, 3-D-drenched jumble.
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Jan 30, 201250As the band of adventurers skips from one supersized Survivor-like challenge to the next, one can't help feeling the creative potential of Verne's vision is wasted.
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40The island locale rings with reggae music regardless of its proximity to Jamaica, and any action sequence is rendered in painfully deliberate slo-mo.
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40Even "Bwana Devil" showed less crassness in its attempts to wow, however, and the more this cardboard blockbuster piles on the cut-rate F/X, the less anyone - the cast, the filmmaker, you - can muster up the energy to care.
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40It's silly enough that young teens are unlikely to be drawn to it unless they've got a thing for Hudgens or want to take an early peek at Hutcherson, who will soon be seen as Peeta in "The Hunger Games." He was great as a sulky brat in "The Kids Are All Right" but in Journey 2 he comes across as wooden, dull and though not yet 20, too old for roles like these.
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40The film is endurable owing solely to Johnson, a veteran of bad kids' movies whose sense of when to dial up the charm in such a generic, soulless entertainment remains impeccable.
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38Anyone old enough to have read Jules Verne or seen the way his work was successfully adapted in the past will suffer worse than the kids in the audience who just came to laugh.
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38Even by the unambitious standards of some children's movies and many movies that star Caine, this one has a difficult time making a case for itself as anything other than an adventure in baby-sitting.
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38Hutcherson spits his lines out as quickly as possible, which you appreciate, because the way the likable Johnson wrestles with his lines ("It looks like the liquefaction has tripled overnight!") you think, well, it's a living.
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33This adventure strands Johnson's famously animated features in eyebrow jail, and squanders his outsized charisma and gift for winking self-deprecation in a thankless worried-stepfather role. It doesn't call for much, beyond a lot of muscles and an ever-present look of concern for his whiny stepson.
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30The result is a goofy-weird mishmash of some pretty swell CGI creatures and some downright lousy screenwriting.
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25For a time, Journey 2 becomes a lost episode of "Lost," then it becomes "King Kong," minus the ape. Then it becomes a ukulele music video featuring the Rock's take on Israel Kamakawiwo'ole's "What a Wonderful World."
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25Prizes computer-generated wizardry above logical plotting or thoughtful character development, a misguided set of priorities exacerbated by the fact that said digital effects prove so chintzy.
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Feb 9, 20120The movie's flexibility with its own rules would be less noticeable if it were busy thrilling us.