The Core

Rating: 1/4 (It is so bad that it is funny!)

The Core is a pop sci-fi movie that takes itself so seriously and is so utterly bad, that it is kind of funny! It is time to save the world (yet again). This time a US military seismic device has somehow stopped the rotation of molten fluid in the earth’s core! Why cannot the USA keep their hands off our planet! Anyway, this has caused the electro-magnetic field around the Earth to disappear and thus opening up our planet to the harmful radiation from the Sun and outer space. It is upto a ragtag bunch of professors and scientists to build a vehicle to travel to the Earth’s core and set off nuclear bombs to restart the fluid motion!

What do you build your vehicle from, if you will be travelling in molten lava and extreme pressure at the earth’s core? The guy in the movie has created a metal called Unobtainium (ROTFL!) that will not melt and will get stronger as pressure increases. They will build a craft using that. Now, how do you drill through thousands of miles of crust? Okay so the same guy has invented a laser that will liquefy anything in its path. How convenient! (While he is at it, can he discover a cure for Cancer too?)

The team sets off in their train-like craft and spend an hour passing through the mantle. Then for some dramatic effect, they hit empty space inside the earth’s mantle and crash there! Wow man, this is fun! But wait, it gets weirder. They walk out of their craft in their suits onto some surface to fix and get their crashed craft going! Whoopee! Remember that this is close to the Earth’s molten core, with God-knows-how-many-millions of Pascals of pressure! I must be on drugs!

An hour later (not their time, I am talking about a freaking 1 hour of movie time) this team now hits the outer core and realizes that it is too light for the nuclear bombs they have. They decide to detonate several of the nuclear bombs at several places to create a ripple effect that will magnify on itself. Meanwhile, every 15 minutes or so, a crew member gets killed off for some reason or the other!

Now we are more than 2 hours into the movie. The two who are left are the female navigator and the clever professor. They save the world and make it back to the surface! And with that the total experience of a 1950s B-grade sci-fi movie is complete. I cannot understand how a movie like this could be made in 2003, built upon such unbelievable science! If not for the length of this movie, it would have made for a good comedy.