Aside from Old School, The Core is easily the funniest picture I've seen so far this year. Of course, it isn't supposed to be a comedy, but that doesn't stop it from delivering big time laughs.

See if you can follow me here. In The Core, natural disasters begin taking place all over the globe. A scientific theorist determines that the Earth's core has stopped spinning and that's what's causing bizarre incidents all over the world. Birds freaking out and flying into buildings, pace makers stopping, and destructive lightening storms wreaking havoc etc. The world is in big trouble. Thankfully, there is hope in the form of Delroy Lindo as a crazed inventor who's been developing a high tech drilling machine that comes in handy in situations just like this. So a crew is assembled to travel to the center of the Earth in this machine, to set off a series of nuclear explosions that will hopefully get the planet's core spinning again. As directed by John Amiel (Copycat, Sommersby), The Core is intentionally silly. At least I hope it is. The alternative is unthinkable.

While this movie is clearly reminiscent of Michael Bay's Armageddon, it actually owes more to the works of disaster film maestro Irwin Allen (Earthquake, The Towering Inferno). There are also shades of Contact, Journey to the Center of the Earth, The Abyss and Innerspace just to name a few.

The Core features a good cast (Lindo, Aaron Eckhart, Hilary Swank, Stanley Tucci, Bruce Greenwood, Alfre Woodard, and Tcheky Karyo) doing extraordinary stupid things in this ridiculous but semi-amusing science fiction film. There is zero dramatic tension on display here, and when these actors are on the verge of bringing anything remotely resembling emotional depth to the surface, they are quickly undercut by the goofiness surrounding them.

The Core is very big in the special effects department, and much of the disaster stuff looks pretty impressive. There are explosions galore and a cool looking bridge collapse. The sequences featuring the drilling machine making it's way to the Earth's center don't fare nearly as well. Perhaps this movie would have benefited from a cheesier effects technique. I mean if Ed Wood were still making movies, he wouldn't be using computer technology, he'd be using plastic toys hanging from strings. That's what this picture is missing.

I can give props to The Core for what it is, but I would have enjoyed it much more if it were shorter. This silliness can only go so far, and the final act is very long winded.

While this movie clearly has an Irwin Allen sensibility, it suffers from being self consciously goofy. Part of the charm of Allen's pictures was in getting the sense that this guy actually thought he was making good movies. That made them all the more entertaining. The Core, by comparison, feels as if it's trying to be ridiculous and that keeps it from reaching cult classic terrain. Still, there is enough dumb, inconceivable, outrageously far-fetched antics here to make The Core marginally entertaining.