Witless 'Journey' gets lost along the way
<I>Let's start with the awkwardly awful 3-D cartoon short that sets the stage for the awkwardly awful 3-D live-action adventure that follows, shall we?
</I>The four-minute "Daffy's Rhapsody" plays like a zombified computer-animated cover of the Looney Tunes classic "The Rabbit of Seville," with voice-over legend Mel Blanc (courtesy of some old, never-used voice tracks) in the starring roles.
Elmer Fudd goes to the opera <I>(huh?) </I>and reverts to his inner-hunter self when he spots Daffy Duck singing an operatic satire onstage.
Fudd whips out his trusty double-barreled shotgun and begins blasting away at the duck, who never drops a note.
Fortunately, Fudd was trained to shoot by thugs from the James Bond movies, so he never hits his target.
He shoots and shoots!
Daffy dodges and sings!
That's the whole cartoon.
And it was created by animators who never gave a thought to how fun it would be for 2012 audiences to watch someone trying to shoot a duck for laughs.
Fudd's shells aren't the only things empty in this story.
<I>Now, on to "Journey 2: The Mysterious Island"!
</I>I'm guessing that a focus group probably gave Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson some advice on how to enhance his likability on the silver screen:
1. He should smile a lot
2. He should sing Hawaiian songs while pretending to play a ukulele.
3. He should bounce berries off his pecs for comic effect.
When the former WWE wrestler breaks into a smile, as he frequently does in "Journey 2," his glaring insincerity jumps out in scary 3-D.
Then, Johnson regales his co-stars with "Aloha Oe" in a musical campfire scene on par with Dr. McCoy and Captain Kirk trying to get Mr. Spock to sing "Row Your Boat" with them in "Star Trek: The Final Frontier."
Is he more likable? I guess.
Johnson plays Hank, a former Navy code expert who reluctantly takes his stepson Sean Anderson (Josh Hutcherson, reprising his role from the 2008 "Journey to the Center of the Earth") on a trip to find Jules Verne's real mysterious island.
Josh thinks his missing grandfather could be there. It takes Josh and Hank about three minutes to decode the island's location, and about as long for a wacky helicopter pilot (Luis Guzman) and his feisty daughter Kailani (Vanessa Hudgens) to fly them there through a terrible storm.
Grandpa (Michael Caine) turns out to be an aging, egocentric Indiana Jones who insists people applaud when he enters their presence.
He and Josh barely have time to say hello before buzzkill Hank notices the entire island - filled with giant lizards, big bees (on loan from "Honey I Shrunk the Kids"?) and tiny elephants - will sink in a matter of days.
<I>Uh</I>, make that <I>hours</I>.
The PG-rated "Journey 2' is harmless family viewing material, provided that you enjoy witless, banal dialogue, gratuitous "Matrix"-like slow-motion shots, and characters advertised as possessing two dimensions more than they actually have.
“Journey 2: The Mysterious Island”
★ ½
Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Michael Caine, Josh Hutcherson, Luis Guzman, Vanessa Hudgens, Kristin Davis
Directed by: Brad Peyton
Other: A Warner Bros. release. Rated PG. 94 minutes