| THE CORE |
 2003
- USA
Director: Jon Amiel - Reviewed by Linda
Actually, I shouldn't say that, because by the end of this review you'll realize that I'm actually encouraging all of you to go see it... under the right conditions. Condition 1: Be with a lot of friends. Condition 2: Be drunk. The Core is actually not a movie at all, but a theme park ride. At least, it fulfills more of the requirements for being a theme park ride than ones for being a movie—the level of skill involved in the acting and special effects, for one. The entire thing takes place in a subterranean vehicle plowing its way to the center of the Earth, where several "terranauts" will detonate a lot of nuclear weapons in order to "restart" the core, which has somehow stopped spinning. This is a crisis mainly because the main character sets fire to a peach and says that this is what will happen to the Earth if they don't do something immediately. The main characters in the film (if they can be called characters) consist of the members of the crew: a college professor played by Hottie McHotterson, I mean Aaron Eckhart (do you like how I lust after people in every review I write?), an astronaut played by Hilary Swank, and two rival scientists played by Delroy Lindo and Stanley Tucci. DJ "poster child for malnutrition" Qualls plays a hacker hired by the government to... um, I don't know. The short version is that they are all boring, annoying, and stupid. The acting is such that they should all be expelled from the Screen Actors Guild. There is of course supposed to be some sort of romantic connection implied between the two leads, Swank and Eckhart, though the only thing they seem to have in common is THE SAME HAIRSTYLE! Seriously! Not only that, but he has blonde highlights... and she doesn't! I find that absolutely hilarious. Maybe it's just me. The special effects are... How can I put this delicately? Laughable. Godawful. Embarassing. I've seen much better computer graphics in video games, and I haven't played one in at least five years. Nearly every shot in the film has some sort of special effect, and even the most simple ones seem to have been botched. Perhaps the filmmakers were in a rush to torture the planet with this masterpiece of crap. (Actually, the movie was made last year and then delayed to add more special effects after it tested well with test audiences without them. If you happen to know anyone that was part of these test audiences, feel free to slap them for me.) This is the kind of movie where a character says, "We're going in." This is the kind of movie where a character sees an apocalyptic electrical storm raging in the distance, and says with a straight face, "This doesn't look good." This is the kind of movie where in an area of the mantle where the pressure is 800,000 pounds per square inch, people get out of the ship and walk around in suits. This is the kind of movie where hacking means mashing your fingers on a keyboard until a lot of red "ACCESS DENIED" messages come up, and then a green "ACCESS GRANTED" message comes up. Just in time, of course. The Core is without a doubt one of the worst movies I've seen in years. Every cliche in the book is used to a painful degree, usually multiple times. When everyone was shuffling out of the theater, I heard MORE THAN ONE person comment that being shot in the head would have been better than The Core. I walked out feeling the same way... yet in retrospect, it is enjoyable in ways that its close relative, Armageddon, is not. The Core is a cinematic crime against humanity, yes, but it was the most fun I've had in weeks, trashing it with my brother on the long walk home. This is one of those rare bad movies that is actually an upper instead of a downer! I think about its badness and burst out laughing. Watch for an early scene involving a DEAD CLOWN BEING DRAGGED AROUND ON A MERRY-GO-ROUND. And we're supposed to be take this seriously. I can hardly breathe right now. Hilarious! (This movie actually only earned one pie slice for its overall artistic merit. I'm adding an extra slice because Eckhart is hot and sweaty—and shirtless once—for a good portion of the film. No, seriously. It sounds shallow, but hey, it kept me in my seat for an hour and a half longer than I would have stayed otherwise. That deserves something!) |
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Well. I saw The Core. Why? I have no idea. So you don't have to?
