That Brendan Fraser isn’t starring in the sequel to 2008’s Journey to the Center of the Earth, is the result of some odd, high-ground Hollywood grandstanding – meh actors standing up for meh directors. The original Journey director, Eric Brevig, was too busy putting the finishing touches on another clonker, Yogi Bear, to devote himself to Journey 2: The Mysterious Island. Unwilling to move on without the franchise originator, Fraser backed out of the film (gasp!), forcing studio execs, unwilling to tap the break on the production timeline, to replace the on screen father of young star Josh Hutcherson’s character, Josh, with a stepfather. Stepping in is Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Isn’t Hollywood life complicated? Sigh.

The first problem for the new film is that it’s hard to imagine anyone’s mother falling for someone as gigantic as The Rock, especially after being married to Brendan Fraser. Johnson has so much hulkishness to overcome in Journey 2 to become the sweet, sensitive stepfather desperately trying to find a fraternal connection with his new teenage son, the prickly Josh. The Rock stoops and flashes soft smiles, he bends his eyebrows, flexes his cheeks, and almost whispers his dialogue. He’s playing a former Navy man, but it is hard to imagine him skirting through the tiny passages and up and down the skinny ladders in most Navy vessels. And just when we thought The Rock’s girth was a downplayed afterthought in Journey 2, director Brad Peyton works in what is perhaps the most gratuitous (read: best) use of 3D technology to date: Luis Guzman tossing oversized berries at Rock’s flexing and bouncing pectorals, which smack the berries back at the camera with the power and consistency of Josh Hamilton at a homerun derby. If you’re wearing 3D glasses, duck.

The pec-baseball moment is one of a number of hokey asides in a film that, somewhat surprisingly considering it was directed by the man behind Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore, manages to string together something of a digestible throwback-kitsch adventure story. The 3D gimmicks are to be expected these days, as are the slapdash storytelling, the pacing and storyline as quick and thin as a 30-minute Nickelodeon show, and the gratuitous teenage cleavage shots of an in-vogue TV star (in Journey 2, it’s High School Musical’s Vanessa Hudgens).

What we don’t see coming is Michael Caine, dressed like a drunken actor who just stumbled off the stage of a community theater after nailing it as Ben Gunn in a Treasure Island adaptation. I’ve come to enjoy cameos by quality actors in big budget schlock. For one, I imagine the cash Caine is storing up will allow the actor to back some more ambitious fare in the future. But it is also fun to watch someone like Caine ham it up in Journey 2 in a role that requires just a dash of his sparkle and a thin slice of his characteristically wry wit.

Caine plays Alexander, Josh’s grandfather who has been sending the boy coded messages via satellite, which the Encyclopedia Brown-type has been picking up on his nicely product-placed iPad, MacBook combo. Josh can’t seem to crack his grandfather’s code, but The Rock, I mean Hank (his character), used to be in the Navy, remember? So he knocks out a translation after a quick glance at the message. Alexander is on “The Mysterious Island” of Jules Verne fame. To find it, Josh and The Rock dart to the attic where they quickly pull a trio of island-based novels (Gulliver’s Travels and Treasure Island, in addition to Verne’s The Mysterious Island), overlay the map images at the front of the books (convenient they had complimentary editions of the three works), and discover the coordinates of Vernes’ secret island.

After a bit of bickering about who’s allowed to do what, off they go – stepfather and stepson – on a relationship-affirming trek that lands them in cahoots with a goofy helicopter pilot (Guzman) and his daughter, Kailani (Hudgens). It’s the overlay of Verne’s setting and Indiana Jones-inspired adventuring, just enough winks at the classics of the genre, which soften the blow of Journey 2’s rock-headed goofiness.