The Racked Focus Review: Journey 2: The Mysterious Island (2012)

Since this is the first of this recurring blog post, I will explain what the overall concept of it is.  The Racked Focus is a website created by Maxwell Haddad and Nathan Donarum.  On the site, they both review and write about some of the many movies that get released into theaters or onto home video.  It is a site that I frequently read, if I have seen the movies.  I don’t tend to read reviews of movies that I haven’t seen.  In this post, I shall be reviewing one of their reviews, writings, or musings.  That is right.  I will be reviewing their reviews.  Let’s get this thing started.

On February 17, 2012, Maxwell published a review of Journey2: The Mysterious Island.  This review praised certain aspects but criticized others.  That was to be expected due to the fact that it was a review, and Max is a critic.  That is how criticism works.  The reviewer will give their thoughts about the positives and negatives of the subject at hand.  People will then read these thoughts and agree or disagree with them.

Maxwell Haddad took some time to explain the background of Journey 2: The Mysterious Island.  His opening paragraph revealed the intricacies of the plot and how it was derived from various sources, including the titular The Mysterious Island, as well as novels such as Treasure Island, and Gulliver’s Travels.  Max’s use of italics to denote all of the titles was aesthetically pleasing to the eye and gave a sense of direction to his writing.  Separating the titles from the rest of the review could have been very confusing if not for this touch of the author.

The review continued forward, now choosing to discuss the underlying elements of the plot.  Mr. Haddad chose to direct the attention of his readers to the relationship drama between stepfather/stepson and grandfather/stepfather.  The way that the review analyzed each of these aspects added to the understanding of what the movie was trying to convey in these plot threads.   This was also the portion of the review when each actor was mentioned alongside their characters.  Maxwell wove the names in with great ease, making it easy to comprehend which actor portrayed which character, and the characters’ roles throughout the film.  The major issue with this section, however, was one sentence in which Maxwell placed five different commas.  A little bit of quick editing could have easily made this sentence flow better and not stand out as a comma filled monstrosity.

There was a great prose that Maxwell used throughout his review, especially while he contemplated the pleasurable aesthetics of the film he had watched.  He mentioned the direction of the film while also taking note of his so-so liking of the effects throughout.

Maxwell finally finished out his review with a slanderous paragraph about how juvenile he felt the film was.  There was not much to take from the paragraph, aside from the fact that Max had a thing for Vanessa Hudgens.  He may have even been a little obsessed with her body.  A statement about how beautiful he found her to be was separated from the rest of the paragraph by a set of parentheses.  If he had not gone right back into the review following this sidetrack, I might have thought that he was distracted from the movie because he was busy eye-fondling her.

The review came to an end with Maxwell’s rating of Journey 2: The Mysterious Island.  He gave his final thoughts on the film and scored it out of a total score of five.  The problem with his scoring was that Max did not state what it was out of five of.  What did the number represent?  Was it five pecans?  Was it five dogs urinating on fire hydrants?  The review was left open-ended by not describing what the number five meant.  There is no way to accurately gage the score when there is no knowledge of what the total could be. (Edit: the rating has since been removed, due to it being a residual from the older version of the website. I like the paragraph too much to remove it, so you get this edit for a notice.)
 

There was a lot to like about the review that Maxwell Haddad wrote.  He had an eloquent way with his words that brought intelligence and a straight forward stream of thought to the review.  The review had a clear direction throughout, and served to get the readers thinking about Journey 2: The Mysterious Island.  It was a good job, all around.

Score: 4 giant bees out of a possible 5 giant bees.