THE CORE

Our planet is so sick at its center that it stops turning, and we’ll all be dead from radiation within a year if somebody doesn’t come up with a cure.

CAST: Aaron Eckhart, Hilary Swank, Delroy Lindo, Stanley Tucci, D. J. Qualls, Richard Jenkins, Tcheky Karyo, Bruce Greenwood, Alfre Woodard

DIRECTOR: Jon Amiel

"The film is frequently hilarious — occasionally, but not often, on purpose. For the most part, it is monumentally dumb. The director, Jon Amiel, has made an old fashioned disaster movie — a combination of ‘Fantastic Voyage’ and ‘The Towering Inferno.’ Apparently, he feels a whole generation of moviegoers has been denied sub-mediocrities like these… Sections of ‘The Core’ drag so sullenly that the crew's six-day mission seems to be taking place in real time. And the vaulting obviousness becomes so dreary that a real-life core shutdown seems like an act of mercy" --Elvis Mitchell, The New York Times

"Although it may be the last thing director Jon Amiel intended, there is something endearing about the old-fashioned earnestness of this disaster movie, complete with flashing numbers, beaucoup scientific jargon and dollops of portentous ‘I think you should check this out’ dialogue…If ‘The Core’ finally has to be classified as a mess, it is an enjoyable one if you're in a throwback mood. After all, a film that comes up with a rare metal called Unobtainium can't be dismissed out of hand." --Kenneth Turan, The Los Angeles Times

"The season for dunderheaded action extravaganzas certainly seems to be upon us with the release of ‘The Core,’ a lumbering mishmash of recent disaster flicks that’s as aggressively loud and obnoxious as it is tiresomely stupid…The film kicks things off with a space shuttle crash landing, and one would worry about the scene conjuring up memories of the recent Columbia disaster were it not for the fact that nothing in this lame-brained adventure ever warrants serious thought…I’ll take Journey to the Center of the Earth’s prehistoric monsters and campy James Mason performance over this drivel any day of the week. --Nicholas Schager, Slant Magazine

"Be warned: This is the sort of movie where you need to check your brains at the popcorn counter...If it bothers you that the crew can maintain radio communication with the surface through hundreds of miles of solid rock--in an era when cell phone signals can't penetrate parts of Manhattan--this is probably not the movie for you…Director Jon Amiel (‘Entrapment’) and his screenwriters clearly have their tongues pretty far into their cheeks and the film provides as many laughs as it does cheap thrills and cheesy special effects…No one's going to confuse ‘The Core’ with art--or even a good film--but it's 25 minutes longer than ‘The Hours’ and I had at least 25 times as much fun." --Lou Lumenick, The New York Post

'' ‘The Core,’ which comes down to a bunch of gifted actors (Hilary Swank, Bruce Greenwood, Delroy Lindo) trying to out-earnest each other as they sit around a cockpit and cruise through digital magma, feels like the sort of thing you might have caught on TV during a rainy Saturday afternoon in the late '60s. It's a schlockier ‘Armageddon’ crossed with ‘Fantastic Voyage,’ minus the fun." --Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly

"…a stew of sci-fi cliches cooked up in a Crockpot and served with a straight face. It may be the best thing that could happen for the reputation of the 1959 Pat Boone thriller ‘Journey to the Center of the Earth.’ In that jaw-dropper, the expedition discovers dinosaurs en route to the core; in this New Age jawdropper, they discover their inner selves. Save us …Only Stanley Tucci seems aware of the drop-dead stupidity of the plot, and acts up a storm of high camp as the narcissistic scientist whose invention of the Destiny doomsday machine started all this in the first place." --Jack Mathews, The New York Daily News