User reviews

Okay, this is getting old now. I'm binge watching Jules Verne's classics, namely 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Mysterious Island and Journey to the Center of the Earth and let me tell you a lot of writers have gone into business for themselves over the years.

What I mean by that is just how few are actually following Verne's work, most use the concept/title and little else. This made for TV effort barely takes the concept and is really just in title only.

Feeling and ending like the pilot episode of a Scyfy original television series it has little to nothing to do with Verne's work and is another example of creators taking liberties with time tested material.

We see a group of adventurers visit the center of the earth via a mole machine and a volcano and it erm.....flies, for some reason. While down there they come across Harry Henderson, vampire slime bat things, cavemen and an evil faceless foe who speaks in a voice that would be cheesy even by 1980's kids show standards.

Sadly the cheesiness doesn't end there, the performances are the over the top, the sfx are exactly what you'd expect for the time and the whole plot is yet another mockery to Verne's classic.

If you're seeking an adaptation of Journey to the Center of the Earth this very much needs skipping over. If you're looking for a cheesy dumb 1990's scifi movie starring Tuvok from Star Trek Voyager and Lurch from the Adams Family then this is the film for you.

The Good:

90's nostalgia novelty

The Bad:

Awful cgi

Has little to do with Jules Verne's work

Needlessly cheesy

Incomplete

Hysterically awful TV update of the classic story clearly (or hopefully) wasted most of its budget on beer, because the special effects stretch to little more than a bloke in a bizarre furry white suit and a dizzily-whizzing, chirpy female head in a bubble (which may remind Brit viewers of a certain recent Building Society Ad). And F. Murray Abraham's in it! It's less than a decade since the Oscar, for God's sake, 'F'! But its fun. GREAT fun. Watch it AFTER the pub, as I'm ashamed to say I did not, and its a classic.

Really from 1993?! The special effects indicate that it could be an end of 60's movie. Awful creatures. Bad "Drilling machine" that look like some enormous Phallus. The evil fish looks like some candy children eat, and the worst of all must be the effect/spiral they use to go from one scene to another. This guy should never be allowed to make any movies, unless it was meant as some bad joke.

This movie shames the original and takes script-writing to an all-time low. Some of the effects were interesting, but the dialog was so bad and the characters so stereotyped, I couldn't finish watching it. 35 minutes was all I could tolerate.

Unless you enjoy really bad movies, avoid this one entirely.

complete turd, as someone already said the characters are _incredibly_ stereotyped. just WHY did they have to throw all events that made the book original and interesting out the window - and replace it with ideas they stole from a todler at a nursery.

This movie at first looked like the simplistic movie that could be entertaining on a Saturday afternoon. One never thought it would be great, but the hope was there for a pleasant if not simple few hours.

This movie could not even achieve those simple explanations. The movie started with some good scenes and some interest. But after a bit the acting seemed to grow much worse. The creatures looked sort of like people in gorilla suits - who also seemed to be guilty of bad acting. The Plot seemed to quickly drift downward into filling up time. Awful. It is hard to imagine a movie that is not even good enough to take a nap to, but this one seems to hit that level.

I liked the movie, but would like to see it developed more, maybe with more mature writers. I would like to see it turned into a series. I'm a science-fiction fan, and someday I would like to write or narrate a revised script for this movie or other movies of a similar type. I think they did pretty good for what they had to work with, but maybe could have done better with a bigger budget.

This originally aired on NBC around the same time as the first Babylon 5 pilot movie, early 1993.

Both were pilots that hopefully would land series, but only Babylon 5 got a series.

NBC was aiming at Star Trek underground. That fall they launched Star Trek underwater instead with SeaQuest.

They built a semi-diverse team. Built in some lore and a lot of mystery. The creature effects are practical and fun. The ship/tank thing looks like it was designed by Toho. There's a lot here and it's all great fun.

And the beginning of the film we get F Murray Abraham doing his best Daniel Jackson a year before Stargate and 8 years before Milo in Atlantis The Lost Continent.

Also Sam Rami (Spider-Man, The Evil Dead, Army of Darkness) has a tiny role as he travels with Abraham in his first drill-ship.

There's plenty of movies that are relatively faithful to the Jules Verne book, most or all of which are fun. This was supposed to be a TV show, aboard a subterranean ship with a crew. It was never trying to be anything else.

I watched this when it first aired and loved it. Now decades later I rewatched it on Prime Video and loved it all over again. Currently it's just free w/ subscription. Hopefully it gets a purchase option because I would love to purchase it so I can watch it again after it's no longer free w/ subscription.

If you are down for adventure fun with rubber monsters, this is a good time. But also a little sad because there is no more.

I've seen many, many movies in my time. Many were very good, and many were very bad. Then there was "Journey to the Center of the Earth". Of all the films I've seen in my 21½ years of existence, I've chosen "Journey..." as the worst that I have ever seen. Okay so it was a TV movie. But still, a mess of a picture like this shouldn't be allowed to waste people's time like it did. It aired 6 years ago (on NBC) and it still lingers in my mind of how distasteful and laughably silly it was. Poor F. Murray Abraham. He went from winning an Oscar to landing a brief supporting role here. Also, I am currently trying to get "Journey..." on the IMDb "bottom 100 movies" list. Please, if you could help, vote for this film, even if you haven't seen it, and give it the biggest 1 you've ever given in your life! Please??

The only thing really surprising to me was that it was filmed in the Nineties and not thirty or forty years earlier. It was quite reminiscent of the films I used to sneak into the neighborhood theater to see on Saturday afternoon. Lots of action, outlandish characters, unbelievable situations and even cheesy swirling scene changes. It doesn't seem to pretend to be anything but what it is, and what it is is not bad,for what it is.

I was drawn to this as I recognised Tim Russ from Star Trek: Voyager (1995) as is at least one of the special effects guys, and a lot of folks doing reviews don't seem to get what this is so I thought I'd chip in.

This is a failed pilot for a sort of live action cartoon in the manner of something like Mighty Morphin Power Rangers (1993) but I'd guess aimed slightly older. It's full of simple character archetypes and comic book style ideas and action pieces, the villain is even voiced by voice actor Frank Welker using his "Dr. Claw" voice from Inspector Gadget (1983) so it's obviously not aiming to impress any high brow critics, and even though it does make a few jokes clearly aimed at watching Mums and Dads, it's obviously meant for a much younger audience.

It has a lot going for it, decent model work, props, make-up and animatronics, a lot of the creatures look pretty cool, but it's let down a lot by the rather shonky video effects, but I guess they were impressive enough back then.

It's a shame it wasn't picked up as a series, as with a bit more money thrown at the effects and a few script and character tweaks it could have been a fun sci-fi for the younger generation of the time. As it stands, it's just about watchable and I'm pretty sure younger kids would enjoy it.

Wow, this is the worst movie I have ever seen. 3.3? No, more like a 0. Seriously, I have watched literally hundreds of movies that are considered 'bad.' But this one is the worst. It's not even funny bad, it's just bad, really really bad. I'm vomiting just thinking about it.

These lines: "sonic bores blind folded" or, "I needed to make sure this ship survived, even if I didn't." Oh, there is the patented black guy, the bad guy in a suit, the old doctor, the 2 hot chicks, and the ugly one, the voiced over ship girl (T-Minus 10 minutes). Oh, and then there are the scenes where they talk to this girl in a floating orb, only none of the actors are even looking near the orb.

God I have a headache now. I have to watch Bad Santa to feel better. Yea, that's what i'm going to do.

"Journey to the Centre of the Earth", the name brings to mind one of the world's best sci fi writers. And what do the Americans do to this pearl of literature. RUIN IT! I am surprised that the Jules Verne estate don't have an automatic chance to preview all films carrying the name and say whether or not it should be shown at all. My vote for this film:

Special Effects 5 Cast 3 Plot -2

Overall average 3.4 out of 10

The only thing that good in this film are the two blonde girls who have pretty faces. I tried to figure out what this film was about, but I failed. If anyone knows just answer me. The original movie's runtime was nearly 3 hours, this film's length is only 90 minutes. I think it tells everything what you can expect. In some scenes it's like Flash Gordon, but even that was better than this. This film is not finished, but I hope, it never will be, because the second part can only be worse. Don't waste your time watching this film, unless you like one of the actors very much, and you want to see every film he/she appears in. Watch the original instead.

My grandparents taped this movie off the TV and gave it to me, and I must have watched it 10 or 15 times. I remember it quite well, with its lame plot twists and bad graphics, it was like watching the ultimate cartoon. Don't ask questions, because explanations that don't exsist just spoil the fun.

The reason I give this made-for-TV piece of neofascist trash a 1 is that there is no zero to award. For those of us who remember Professor Lindenbroek, Pat Boone, and Arlene Dahl in the great original movie, this piece of TV crap is unutterably boring and cardboard-like. In addition, this creation, if it can be dignified by that word, tries to connect to the current zeitgeist by featuring a bunch of young, uniformed people who communicate to each other through pseudo-military-speak: "That's an affirmative!" "Roger that!" and similar gung-ho utterances. The creators of this timewaster are kissing up to the military mania that is currently sweeping America, not unlike the case of Starship Trooper. The difference is that it is done even less well and more blatantly. When this movie comes on, switch to the weather channel for better entertainment.