Cast: Aaron Eckhart, Hilary Swank, Delroy Lindo, Stanley Tucci, Tchéky Karyo, Bruce Greenwood, DJ Qualls, Alfre Woodard, Richard Jenkins
Director: Jon Amiel
Producers: Sean Bailey, David Foster, Cooper Layne
Screenplay: Cooper Layne, John Rogers
Cinematography: John Lindley
Music: Christopher Young
U.S. Distributor: Paramount Pictures
If I was to review The Core based on an objective set of cinematic criteria, it would likely score around one-half star (if I was in a generous mood). But such a rating would deny an inescapable fact about this film: at times, it is wildly entertaining. The Core is so howlingly awful that it has unwittingly found a place in that elite group of films that can claim to be "so bad they're good." It is certainly the case that many of the cinema's most horrendous endeavors are unwatchable. Not so in this case. If not for the bloated running length (at 2:13, it's at least 45 minutes too long), it would be easy to recommend The Core. For adventuresome souls who crave this sort of experience, it's worth a look. Bombs of this magnitude with such a high enjoyability quotient don't come along often.
If the average disaster movie falls into the "guilty pleasure" category, then seeing The Core should require a penance. I am hard-pressed to recall any big budget motion picture that has done so many things wrong. Next to this, Armageddon is an example of intelligence and restraint. The writing is abysmal, the acting comes across as a contest to see who can chew on the scenery the fastest and the loudest, and the special effects appear childish and outdated. Badness permeates every frame of The Core. In fact, the movie is so obviously over-the-top and moronic that it wouldn't surprise me to learn that some of the more egregious examples of idiocy are intentional. Director Jon Amiel (Sommersby, Copycat) is a competent director; it's hard to imagine a movie going so far south without a nudge from him. Perhaps at some point, he realized there was no way The Core could be salvaged as a serious endeavor, so he decided to make it into an "intentional unintentional" comedy. Thus, by sabotaging his own work, the filmmaker tried to save it. Or maybe I'm giving Amiel too much credit. Maybe he was just possessed by the ghost of Ed Wood.
The story is simple enough. Bad government people have been mucking around with the natural order of things by trying to develop a weapon that can cause earthquakes anywhere around the globe. In doing this, they have inadvertently stopped the planet's core from spinning, which results in a breakdown of the electromagnetic field. Many disasters are evident throughout The Core (and I'm not just referring to the acting and writing) – pigeons run amok in London (an Alfred Hitchcock homage?), the space shuttle has a rough landing, a superstorm fries the Roman Coliseum, and the solar winds dismantle the Golden Gate Bridge. (How is it that, as heat causes the bridge to disintegrate, the cars on it remain intact as they plunge into the water below?) The solution: send a specially designed craft through the Earth's crust and mantle into the core, detonate a few nuclear (or, as often seems to be the case in Hollywood productions or George W. Bush speeches, "nucular") weapons, and get the rotation going again.
You can stop laughing now. I'm serious. That is the movie's plot. And, believe it or not, the execution is funnier than the description.
The burrowing ship is manned by six stock characters. Josh Keyes (Aaron Eckhart) is a physics professor who has the misfortune of being the first to discover the problem. Dr. Conrad Simsky (Stanley Tucci, wearing a hairpiece that makes William Shatner's look credible) is the nation's premiere geophysicist – and also one of the bad people responsible for the problem. Dr. Edward Brazleton (Delroy Lindo) serves two functions: he designed the ship and he's also the token minority. (Affirmative action is alive and well in save-the-world explorations.) Sergei Leveque (Tchéky Karyo) is the "weapons specialist," whatever that means. More importantly, he's French, and he dies, so that will pacify some viewers in the current political climate. Major Rebecca Childs (Hilary Swank) and Colonel Robert Iverson (Bruce Greenwood) are space shuttle veterans in charge of piloting and navigation, respectively.
I laughed a lot during The Core – at least as often as during either Bringing Down the House or Old School. The film's science is so absurd that even a grade schooler would be able to pick it apart. The dialogue isn't any better. The special effects might have been state-of-the-art two decades ago, but, in today's climate, they look cheesy. How is it that the Earth's mantle bears a remarkable resemblance to the innards of Star Trek: The Motion Picture's V'ger? One of many intriguing questions posed by this film…
As big-budget camp goes, The Core is first-rate. If you take the movie seriously, it's an unmitigated disaster, a surefire walk-out. But, if you adjust your thinking and take the production for what it is (not necessarily what it was intended to be), there is perverse enjoyment to be had.
The movie is being released close to April 1. But who's the butt of this joke?
© 2003 James Berardinelli