Journey 2: The Mysterious Island

I Did Not Smell What The Rock Was Cooking

Few movies are enjoyable for both children and adults, and Journey 2: TheMysterious Island is just another opportunity for parents to occupy their children with popcorn and sweets while taking a well-deserved nap in a darkened theater. Journey 2 appears like it could be exciting at first glance. However, the script is so predictable that the only thing raising my heart rate and peaking my interest were my constant digging to the bottom of my candy box for another chocolate distraction.

Journeys thinly stretched plot centers around a “rebellious” teenager Sean (Josh Hutcherson) going on an adventure to a mysterious island with his new stepfather Hank (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson). With the help of comic relief tour guide Gabato (Luis Guzman) and his temperamental daughter Kailani (Vanessa Hudgens) they easily find the mysterious island and quickly meet up with Sean’s explorer grandfather Alexander (Michael Caine) only to discover that they must get off of the island in two days or the island will sink into the ocean.

The story was laughable. Every single conflict in the film was settled effortlessly. In the beginning of the film Sean receives a mysterious coded transmission from a distant mysterious island. Within two minutes of screen and literal time, Sean and Hank have cracked the code, translated the message, solved a century old mystery, discovered three hidden maps in histories greatest non-Jules Verne fantasy novels (which wasn’t even alluded to and left completely unsolved at the end of the film), and pieced all three maps together into a single map of the Mysterious Island using ‘intuition.’ Does Sean go to the island to uncover some long lost treasure? Nope. Must he save his grandfather from impending doom? No sir. Sean’s driving objective of the film is to go to the island “Because he wants to and it’s an adventure” Yep.

Act II is a series of easily solvable obstacles with a ton of money thrown at cool 3-D visual effects. The story was so full of holes and unresolved issues that I left the theatre with more questions than answers, and I didn’t care what the answers were. Throughout Act II each obstacle was essentially the same: “On no, here comes a giant animal” insert quickly thought up and executed one beat solution here, repeat until 60 pages have been completed.

Although it’s a movie intended for children, there is no excuse for the complete lack of sub-text in the dialogue. Each character always says exactly what they think and feel about each other immediately and each line of dialogue is forced and monotonous. Your children are smarter than that.

To their credit, the actors did what they could with an abysmal script. There were a few exchanges between Guzman and Johnson that made me crack a smile. However, the haphazardly sewn together comic moments were unnecessary to the story and made it painfully obvious that the writers simply pulled a bunch of cliché’s out of a hat and called it a movie. At one point “The Rock” heals Sean’s busted ankle with a song on the ukulele using the healing powers of song.

Journey 2 is visual eye candy with a few jokes thrown in to keep parents from dragging their protesting children from the theater. Do yourself a favor and rent something or play a board game with your kids. If you absolutely must go see Journey 2 because you promised the wee ones, take some comfort that Mysterious Island is only eighty-eight clock-watching minutes.