There’s trash, and then there’s good trash. Actually, I’m not even sure the appellation applies to Journey to the Center of the Earth, which is really among the sweetest family films in many a moon. If you’re looking for flaws, I guess a few could be enumerated. Our hero (Brendan Fraser), a rather goofy geologist, is forever screwing up (especially in the first half) and having to be rescued by a buxom Icelandic mountain guide (Anita Briem) – who saves his life twice – or his 13-year-old nephew (Josh Hutcherson), who’s predictably dismissive when Brendan doesn’t know how to Google his way out of trouble (“Welcome to the 21^st century!”); this is Homer Simpson Land, the dumbing-down of the Western male, and it gets a bit annoying. Anything else? Maybe the relentless Spielbergian rhythm, shuttling from peril to peril like rides in a theme-park. Anything else? Well, maybe the fact that Journey was designed for 3-D, shown in that (rather gimmicky) format in selected theatres in the US and Europe – but of course we [in Cyprus] get to watch in 2-D, which explains why objects (Brendan’s spit, a yo-yo) get hurled at the camera at regular intervals. You’d think he was spitting right at you, at least with the 3-D glasses. Looks a bit stupid without them, though.

Anything else? I can’t think of anything – except of course that the whole thing is ridiculous. Impressionable kids should be told that, though the centre of the Earth is our Final Frontier (Man has only burrowed 3 km. down out of a possible 6,370, according to my trusty Bill Bryson), it’s highly unlikely to involve underground oceans, carnivorous plants or hungry dinosaurs. I actually recall watching the 1959 version of Journey with a friend when we were both 13 (by which time it was already an oldie), both of us laughing out loud at the un-scientific notions on display. You know something’s straining at the outer limits of risibility when it can’t even sell the pubescent audience.

Yet the film – which borrows visual cues from the 1959 version, even while updating the characters – is so loveable, so infused with a spirit of adventure, and Brendan Fraser with his doughy manchild face seems so credulous, so game, so ready to accept whatever far-fetched conceit gets lobbed at him. Pushing 40, Fraser remains childlike (the nephew calls him by his first name, which seems only natural) yet his comic timing is impeccable: the film’s biggest laugh comes when our heroic trio stray onto a patch of muscovite which promptly cracks, sending them hurtling down a deep abyss – and so deep is the abyss that they scream, then stop screaming, then look at each other. Pause, then Fraser squeaks: “We’re STILL falling!”.

How can anyone survive such a fall? Does it really matter? Also on the way is a rollercoaster ride with mine-wagons on underground tracks (obviously a straight steal from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom), a chasm crossed by using floating rocks as stepping-stones, the aforementioned dinos and carnivorous plants, some fish with really big teeth – the film might be slightly scary for the very young and squeamish – and such delicious detail as a shot through a veil of giant dandelions, our heroes looking like refugees from some long-forgotten Flower Power musical. The source is of course Jules Verne, and Journey has that questing, playful spirit of anything-is-possible (the true spirit of sci-fi, before it was gussied up and parcelled out into special-effects extravaganzas) – though of course it’s also made by Walden Media, the clean-cut corporation who’ve been cutting quite a swathe through children’s films in the past few years (they’re the folks behind Chronicles of Narnia). Everything’s quite wholesome, especially Josh Hutcherson – a Walden veteran, having also starred in Bridge to Terabithia – as our young hero. He’s a surly adolescent for a while, scowling and refusing to co-operate with his uncle – but then Unc hands him the aforementioned yo-yo and before long he’s chortling happily and ‘walking the dog’, PlayStation forgotten. It’s that kind of movie.

Bangkok Dangerous isn’t necessarily so different: another remake (the Hong Kong-born Pang Brothers remaking their own 1999 action flick), another trip to a strange exotic place – in this case Bangkok, with suitably exotic incidentals (junior kickboxers, the Floating Market). You even get Nicolas Cage in a wig so terrifying it deserves its own ride in the Centre of the Earth theme-park, glowering from its perch on his head like a saturnine rodent.

Alas, the film is dull, with Cage as a misanthropic hitman whose m.o. is simple and efficient: do the job, “don’t take an interest in people outside work”, don’t ask questions, know when to get away clean. His latest project is a series of murders in Bangkok, and he hires an expendable local to help him with logistics – but then the local finds out who he is, and asks Cage to train him. Clearly, this request should be a death sentence; even beyond our hero’s rigid rules, he still has three hits to carry out at this point, and having his identity compromised could spoil everything. Yet he agrees to the request, and spends time teaching this foolish Thai street-kid everything he knows. Why? Because “I looked into his eyes and saw myself,” he explains. Give it up, Nic, you’ll be telling us that’s real hair on your head next.

Bangkok Dangerous has three main ingredients. (1.) Cage kills someone, or prepares to kill someone (the occasional burst of graphic violence explains the ‘18’ rating). (2.) Cage bonds with his sidekick, though their scenes are so undeveloped they barely exist. (3.) Cage falls in love with a deaf-mute girl, the film collapsing in hilarious gooeyness. The girl has a fixed smile – she looks like a TV presenter – and a sweet disposition; the hitman, meanwhile, behaves like a tourist, looking alarmed when they visit an elephant park (we’re in Thailand, remember?) and burning his mouth with all that spicy food. “It’s … hot,” he explains, flapping his hand, and she giggles becomingly. I think I preferred it when he killed people.

Alas, the girl too finds out who he is. Moments after she passes him a note reading “I am happy together with you” they’re attacked by three random muggers – they literally jump out of nowhere – so of course he has to kill them, and her smile fades as she realises he’s not “in banking” after all (the device is so clumsy I keep thinking I must’ve missed something, but apparently it is just meant as an Unfortunate Coincidence). By the time a politician appears on TV and the sidekick says, apropos of nothing, “He is a good man” – no prizes for guessing the “good” politician will be Nic’s next victim, precipitating a crisis of conscience – Bangkok Dangerous doesn’t even seem to be trying anymore. The film isn’t a total loss: it does look attractively moody, mostly shot at night with light-splashed urban landscapes – but in the end it barely matters. Sometimes trash is just trash.