The acting is generally balanced, but the sense of actors telegraphing their lines had me cringing: ‘Can you put up the sail?’ ‘Okay, I am now putting up the sail’. The characters say out aloud exactly what they’re doing for almost the entire movie, ‘Let’s build a raft’, ‘Okay, we are starting to build a raft’. ‘That creature looks hungry, let’s shoot some of those birds to feed it’, ‘Yes, let’s start to shoot’. Well thanks characters, but we can pretty much for ourselves what you’re doing, morons. The centre of the earth is reached by the team pretty much spending five minutes walking and abseiling down dark hills and monologuing about how deep they are in the earth, and then walking horizontally out of a tunnel into bright sunshine with a pine forest, grass, a blue lake, ready-chopped pine trees for them to make a raft… and except for the slight yellow tinge covering the screen (thanks Mr camera-operator for remembering to use your yellow filter lense), you’d think their excursion to the centre of the earth was a load of b-s. When they are attacked while on their raft, the same shots of a creature rising to the surface and sinking beneath the water is lamely used multiple times to indicate different creatures.

I could go on about how lame this film is, but do yourself a favour, try to find the original version on dvd and watch it. Your brain cells will get some exercise, and you won’t find the characters describing their own actions throughout the film.