Michael Caine must be a jolly good sport.
Some time during the making of “Journey 2: The Mysterious Island,” a director had to say to him, “Sir Michael Caine, this is the part when you clamber atop a bee the size of a small plane, hold on tight and pretend to fly over the island.”
And the two-time Oscar winner did it, for an adventure also starring Dwayne Johnson, Josh Hutcherson, Vanessa Hudgens and Luis Guzman and opening in 2-D, 3-D and IMAX.
It’s a sequel to 2008’s “Journey to the Center of the Earth” although it makes no mention of the Brendan Fraser character and replaces the actress who played the mom with Kristin Davis.
Hutcherson, who explored a lost world with his uncle in the first movie, returns as Sean, now a 17-year-old unhappily living in Dayton, Ohio, with his mother and stepfather, Hank (Johnson), a Navy veteran who runs a construction company. He helps Sean crack a cryptogram that proclaims, “The island is real.”
Further sleuthing suggests that, as in the original, Jules Verne may have been writing fact rather than fiction, and Sean’s missing grandfather, Alexander, could be stranded on the island.
Hank, desperate to bond with his stepson, accompanies Sean to the South Pacific, where they discover no boater will take them to the uncharted island, but an opportunistic helicopter pilot, Gabato (Guzman), and his daughter (Vanessa Hudgens) will, for a pretty penny.
They fly smack into lightning and hurricane-force winds, which tear the chopper apart and dump them on the beach of the mysterious island where they eventually encounter Sean’s grandfather (Caine), lizards the size of dinosaurs, elephants no bigger than dogs, and an imminent threat that could destroy the isle and them with it.
Brad Peyton (“Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore”), directing a screenplay by Brian Gunn and Mark Gunn, uses Gabato as comic relief that comes off as corny and clueless instead of funny. Alexander and Hank have instant animosity, for no good reason except it has to exist to melt into mutual respect later.
Some of the computer-generated tricks on the island are obvious — people in the foreground, fakery in the background — but it passes the test of a storybook come to wondrous life. Filmed mainly in Hawaii, it has a bit of everything, from flowers as tall as trees and distant waterfalls to a gurgling volcano and mysterious cave holding a clue to escape.
Caine’s character has reconstructed civilization, after a fashion, but the story is so condensed that the other castaways are mere visitors looking to leave as soon as they arrive. The London-born actor, 78, is an asset in any project and so, it turns out, is the entertainer formerly known as The Rock who can sing, play the ukulele and do the “pec pop of love” by making his chest muscles dance.
“Journey 2,” being released six weeks before “The Hunger Games” starring 19-year-old Hutcherson as Peeta Mellark, is a wholesome family film that makes good use of 3-D and a likable cast and manages to put its characters in danger without ever scaring anyone.
And it uses not comic books but literary classics as inspiration, which might be the most magical trick of all.
“Journey 2: The Mysterious Island” is rated PG and is showing in 2-D at College 9 and Roxy, and in 3-D UEC Theater 12.
