Cheesy Tomatoes: Journey to the Center of the Earth

Yesterday, I took my son to see Journey to the Center of the Earth, the new adaptation of Jules Verne’s nineteenth-century novel. Though I’ve heard of the book, I’ve never read it, and I’ve never seen any of the other numerous television and movie adaptations of it, either, so I walk in eagerly anticipa…“Dad, can people really travel to the center of the earth?”

“No, son,” I tell him, “I don’t believe so.”

“Then why do they do it here?” he says. I tell him to let’s just watch the movie and find out. We get our popcorn, drinks, and candy; sit through the trailers; and watch as Brendan Fraser, our hero, a professor this go ‘round, delivers a lecture to half of class of bored students.

“Dad,” my son says, “that’s what your students looked like this summer.”

“Let’s just watch the movie, son, okay?” Fraser’s not only a professor, but he’s also a plate tectonic researcher, and he’s been carrying on his late brother’s work for about ten years in a lab that Fraser discovers will soon be shut down and used for storage space. After Fraser gets this bit of bad news, he goes home to receive some more: his nephew—whom he hasn’t seen in—guess what—ten years is coming to spend ten days with him—and he’s coming right now! Oh noes! His house is a mess, clothes thrown on the floor, plates of food all over the place.

“Dad,” my son says, “that’s what our house looks like whenever you’re in charge of cleaning, doesn’t it?”

“Let’s just watch the movie, son, okay?” This time, he giggles.

As Fraser busies himself cleaning, his sister-in-law arrives at the door.

“Dad,” my son says, “who’s that?”

“That’s his sister-in-law, son.”

“Oh, then that’s why he’s worried. Mom always looks like that whenever her sister-in-law comes over, doesn’t she?”

“Let’s just watch the movie, son, okay?” Fraser walks outside to greet his nephew, who is still sitting in car, playing a video game, obviously oblivious to the world around him. Fraser asks him about the Gameboy he’s playing, and the nephew harrumphs, telling the old fart that it’s not a Gameboy—it’s a PSP.

“Dad,” my son says, “that’s a PSP.”

“Yeah!” I tell him. “They’re cool, aren’t they?”

“Yeah,” he says. Alright, then. Good for me. You see, I just bought my son a PSP two days ago as a present for his upcoming eighth birthday, and he doesn’t know it yet. Hee-hee!

Along with the gift of the boy (for ten days), Fraser’s sister-in-law also gives Fraser a box of his late brother’s effects, which includes a copy of Jules Verne’s A Journey to the Center of the Earth. Fraser thumbs through it and discovers notes, charts, graphs, and turkghetti recipes that his brother wrote in the margins of the text.

“Dad,” my son says, “why did his brother write in that book?”

“Let’s just watch the movie and find out, son.”

“Dad—you’re not supposed to write in books.”

“But it was his book, so he could write in it if he wanted to.”

“I thought he just said it was his brother’s book.”

"Well, that’s what I meant. It was his brother’s book, but his brother could write in it if he wanted to, ‘cause his brother owned it, it was his brother’s property.”

“You’re not supposed to write in books, though.”

“Well, if it’s your own book, then it’s okay.”

“I think it’s against the law. It’s illegal, Dad.”

“It’s not illegal, son. It’s okay. When I was in college, I used to write in my books, too, to take notes, to put my thoughts down, my reactions, or just to write down things that the teacher said.” My son just eyed me for a few seconds, then…

“You're going to jail.”

“Son, I’m not going to jail for writing in textbooks—fifteen years ago—that I paid for myself.”

“You weren’t supposed to. Didn’t you know that? It’s ill-le-gal!”

“Who told you that?”

“Mom.”


“Let’s just watch the movie, son.”

Next thing I know, Fraser and Angsty Teenager are driving through a deserted, snowy road in Iceland. I have no idea why or how they got there. They meet some late professor’s daughter, living alone in the middle of nowhere. A fit, trim, and beautiful professor’s daughter—living alone—in the middle of nowhere—in Iceland. She agrees to take them to the mountains, a storm begins to brew, Fraser starts lifting a volcanic/seismic-measuring device out of the ground, and lightning strikes near the trio. “The lighting is attracted to the metal. Run!” Icelandic Princess and Angsty Teenager run and find safety in a nearby cavern, but Fraser heroically refuses to budge, because he—must—have—the—doo—hickey. Lighting strikes closer and closer to him, and he—finally—with—one—last—tug—pulls it free, and he takes off—and the lightning does, too. It follows him, striking to his left, to his right, to his rear, like Elmer Fudd shooting at Bugs Bunny. Fraser makes it to the cavern just in time…for the entrance to cave in. Oh noes! Stuck! In a cave! In the dark! Fortunately, Icelandic Princess read the screenplay, so she prepared herself for just such an event: signal flares. As the trio meander through the cave, Icelandic Princess tells her companions that this cavern was once the site of a mining operation that was shut down after a disaster that killed eighty-something people. Let’s see…our heroes are in a cave where there has been a (somewhat recent) mining explosion, so what should our scholarly spelunkers do now? What’s the wisest choice of action considering the circumstances? Oh, I know…let’s light a signal flare! Of course, there’s always the chance of…you guessed it…explosion! So, after the explosion, our heroes are in the dark again, until, that is, Icelandic Princess remembers…her glowsticks!

“Dad,” my son says, “I used to have one of those. That’s a glowstick.”

“I know, son. Let’s just watch the movie.”

“Can I have one for my birthday?”

“I don’t know, son, we’ll see. Let’s just….”

“Why not?”

“I didn’t say you couldn’t, I just….”

“But you didn’t say, ‘yes,’ either. Why not?”

“Well, you see, the stuff inside….”

“Liquid. It’s not stuff; it’s liquid. I thought you were a teacher.”

“I know it’s liquid. And it’s the liquid that….”

“It glows in the dark, too. Not the tube. The liquid. What makes it glow?”

“It’s made with some kind of luminescent chemical. However, now…”

“If I gave it to Georgia [my two-year-old daughter], and she drank it, would she glow in the dark?”

“Nicholas! That’s just what I was talking about. It’s poisonous, son; it would kill her. You don’t need a glowstick.”

“But I wouldn’t drink it, duh. I ‘m not stupid, you know.”

“Let’s just watch the movie, son.” I am now distraught, worried about my son wanting to use by daughter as a science experiment. No telling what else he has in mind. No telling what else he’s already tried. Ooo…shudder. Don’t go there, Andy. Don’t even think about it.

Doesn’t work. I do think about it. Was he serious? Surely not. He loves his sister. Oh, but she does get on his nerves, though, multiple times a day. But I don’t think…no. No. Just look at him, his feet crossed in his lap, eating popcorn, smiling, bobbing his seat up and down, as sweet and innocent a seven-year-old as you’ll ever see. And then something loud happens on the screen, and Nicholas shouts, “Oh, cool! Blood!” Oh, deardeardeardeardear.

“Dad,” my son says, “look! It’s just like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom!”

Sure enough, the three characters are traveling through the cave in mine carts going faster than they should. Suddenly, the track splits.

“Dad,” my son says, “that happened in Indiana Jones, too!”

One track is about to end, and Icelandic Princess is in the cart on the track, so she jumps into Fraser’s cart, just in time, too, for her cart is now splintered.

“Dad,” my son says, “that happened in Indiana Jones, too. Hey! That boy is like Short Round, and that woman is like the blonde woman, and, and….Hey! That man is a professor, like Indiana Jones was.”

“You’re right!”

“That’s cheating.”

“Let’s just watch the movie, son.”

Back on the screen, our intrepid trio soon pass a supergigantic dinosaur fossil, easily three times the size of the T-Rex fossil we’ve seen in a couple of museum exhibits. “Look, Nicholas! A dinosaur skeleton! I wonder what that means, huh?”

“Dad,” my son says, “don’t you know that dinosaurs are extinct?”

“Yeah, but that’s what makes this so creepy”

“Dad, humans didn’t exist when dinosaurs were alive.”

“I know that son, but….”

“They fight a dinosaur. I saw it on the previews. How can they fight a dinosaur? Dinosaurs are extinct!”

“But son, they’ve traveled down to earth’s core, where a land exists where, I guess, dinosaurs are not extinct.”

“How did they get down there? They couldn’t have fit through that cave. Ahh, this is confusing.” A few moments later, and that dinosaur my son saw on the preview is now chasing Fraser. “Dad,” my son says, “how can he keep outrunning that dinosaur? Why doesn’t the dinosaur step on him already?”

“I don’t know, son, I don’t know. Let’s just watch the movie.”

“If it was you, the dinosaur would have eaten you already—and spit you out, ‘cause you taste like poop!”

“Let’s just watch the movie, son.”

“Is it almost over?”
“I think so. I think they’re about to escape.”

“How?”

“I think they’re going to let the steam push them up through a tunnel back to the surface.”

“Steam?”

“Air created by water condensation.”
“I know what steam is, Dad. I’m not stupid.”

“Then why’d you ask?”

“They’re going to ride on air? All the way back to the surface?”

“I think so. Let’s just watch and find out.”

“How can you ride on air? It’s not a solid. It’s a gas. You can’t ride on gas.”

“If there was enough of it….”

“You’ve got enough of it.” He snickered.

“Nicholas!” He giggled some more and quieted down. Our heroes did indeed right a pocket of steam up through the mountain, and they landed on the earth’s surface, sliding down a mountain—in Italy. As they were sliding (on a dinosaur’s jawbone) down the relatively smooth, rockless surface of the mountain, they sliced through a vineyard, smashed grapes (the size of cocoanuts) hitting all three characters in the face.

“Dad,” my son says, “what’s that? What’re those?”
“Those are grapes, son. They’re sliding through a vineyard.”
“What’s a vineyard?”

“A place that grows grapes. Most vineyards are used to make wine.”

“Then why don’t they call it a grapeyerd?”

“Well, grapes grow on vines, son.”

“Other things grow on vines, too, don’t they?”

“Nicholas…the movie’s almost over, okay?” The three heroes return to America, and Frazier gives No-Longer-Angsty Teenager some of his father’s other books that were in his effects. No-Longer-Angsty Teenager pulls out a book with Atlantis in the title, asking Fraser if they can go there. Fraser tells him they’ll do so over the Christmas holidays (or something to that effect. The movie then ends, and I asked my son if he knows what Atlantis is.

“Yeah. It’s not real.”

“But do you know what it is?”

“The sunken city from a long time ago. It’s not real.”

“Well, it could be.”

“Dad….”

“Isn’t Spongebob from Atlantis?”

“No. He’s from Bikini Bottom. Everybody knows that.”

Oh. We get home, and my wife asks Nicholas if he enjoyed the movie. He did, and I ask him to tell her about what he saw the boy playing with. He tells her. “Oh, my,” she says, “isn’t that what you were wanting for your birthday?” Before he can answer, I tell her to look at the birthday list he made right before he went to the movie. First item listed: a blue Nintendo DS. “You’ve got a Nintendo DS on here. Is that what you want?”

"It was," I interjected, "until he saw the boy use the PSP in the movie."

"I don't know," my son replied, "I think a want a Nintendo DS. It's blue! And Grace has one, but it's pink, but mine would be blue!"

Oy.

He runs off into another part of house, and I hear him shout his sister’s name, then I hear her crying. Oh my…anything…let it be anything but a glowstick.