Opening

73% Fast & Furious 6 May 24
21% The Hangover Part III May 23
64% Epic May 24
97% Before Midnight May 24
88% We Steal Secrets: The Story Of Wikileaks May 24
83% Fill the Void May 24
17% A Green Story May 24
—— Alyce Kills May 24

Top Box Office

87% Star Trek Into Darkness $70.2M
78% Iron Man 3 $35.8M
50% The Great Gatsby $23.9M
46% Pain & Gain $3.2M
69% The Croods $3.0M
77% 42 $2.8M
55% Oblivion $2.3M
99% Mud $2.2M
36% Peeples $2.2M
8% The Big Wedding $1.2M

Coming Soon

—— After Earth May 31
—— Now You See Me May 31
100% The Kings of Summer May 31
89% The East May 31

The Core (2003)

tomatometer

41

Average Rating: 5.3/10
Reviews Counted: 153
Fresh: 63 | Rotten: 90

A B-movie with its tongue planted firmly in cheek, The Core is so unintentionally (intentionally?) bad that it's a hoot.

47

Average Rating: 5.3/10
Critic Reviews: 32
Fresh: 15 | Rotten: 17

A B-movie with its tongue planted firmly in cheek, The Core is so unintentionally (intentionally?) bad that it's a hoot.

audience

41

liked it
Average Rating: 2.7/5
User Ratings: 96,631

My Rating

Movie Info

An unlikely band of scientists and soldiers join forces to save the world from certain destruction in this action-drama. As the world is struck with a variety of inexplicable phenomena -- attacks by enormous swarms of birds in London, the explosion of the Colosseum in Rome, a potentially deadly malfunction which forces the Space Shuttle into a Los Angeles riverbed, and the simultaneous deaths of 32 people with pacemakers in Boston -- a team of top scientific minds from around the globe is

Sep 9, 2003

$31.0M

Paramount Pictures - Official Site External Icon

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All Critics (173) | Top Critics (36) | Fresh (64) | Rotten (91) | DVD (28)

Undigestible fusion of worst-case earth science and leaden pacing.

April 1, 2003 Full Review Source: Village Voice
Village Voice
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[I]t's not campy enough to be consistently entertaining, and it's certainly not exciting or smart enough to be a first-rate sci-fi epic like a Deep Impact.

March 31, 2003 Full Review Source: Ebert & Roeper
Ebert & Roeper
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Jules Verne this isn't, but it makes for fairly diverting escapist fare.

March 28, 2003 Full Review Source: USA Today
USA Today
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There's a marked absence of panic in The Core.

March 28, 2003 Full Review Source: Toronto Star
Toronto Star
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Scientists may shudder, but at least some good actors are getting work.

March 28, 2003 Full Review Source: Seattle Times
Seattle Times
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The Core works because the characters are idiosyncratic enough to seem authentic but not so zany that they seem contrived.

March 28, 2003 Full Review Source: San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Chronicle
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A magical film: it never runs out of new and delightful ways to be completely inane.

December 23, 2012 Full Review Source: Antagony & Ecstasy
Antagony & Ecstasy

This is a big, dumb, explosion movie.

December 28, 2010 Full Review Source: Common Sense Media
Common Sense Media

'The only truly interesting aspect found in "The Core" is Jon Amiel's thoughts as to what the inner parts of Earth might look like.'

March 31, 2005 Full Review Source: Film Threat
Film Threat

If something isn't done soon, the earth as we know it (love that cliché) will destroy itself. Who do you call? Core busters!

October 15, 2004 Full Review

Should be a sci-fi screenwriter's dream; but this dream is more like one that Michael Crichton would have than Jules Verne, and there's not a breath of imagination on display

July 6, 2004 Full Review Source: F5 (Wichita, KS)

'Look out! It's diamonds big as Cape Cod!' No, they're large black blobs that the CGI guys clearly didn't have time to fill in with vector graphics. No need for alarm.

March 8, 2004 Full Review Source: eFilmCritic.com
Oz
eFilmCritic.com

The Core ain’t your grandma’s journey to the center of the earth.

February 12, 2004 Full Review | Comments (2)
Atlantic City Weekly

The Core is really nothing more than a special effects show, but for the most part, they aren't exactly special.

January 6, 2004 Full Review Source: Star-Democrat (Easton, MD)
Star-Democrat (Easton, MD)

A disaster film with a high calibre cast, atrocious, inane dialogue, unspectacular special effects and questionable science. But fun nonetheless.

October 27, 2003 Full Review Source: Apollo Guide
Apollo Guide

Hillary Swank and Aaron Eckhart lead the latest adventure to save the world from natural forces... YAWN.

October 7, 2003 Full Review Source: EDGE Boston
EDGE Boston

Audience Reviews for The Core

I dunno why but I do like this disaster film :) yes its totally stupid, totally unrealistic and completely along the lines of 'Armageddon under the earth' but to hell with it! its a fun ride.

Part of this is down to the likeable cast of science bods for me, Eckhart has always kinda been the bigger version of Scott Bakula in my humble view, a nice guy with floppy hair haha Karyon and Lindo are both solid as always and Tucci is fully enjoyable as the whiney scrawny egghead who will obviously kick the bucket hehe. Only downside is the Justin Bieber lookalike Swank who is just too damn wholesome and American to stand for so long.

The film is simply fun from the get go really, your typical disaster scenes across the world to the cool ideas the film makers came up with for the earth's interior, it really does feel like an updated 'Journey to the Centre of the Earth' when the crew break into a huge geode which then begins to leak lava. I think the creative team did well with whats shown as the crew progress deeper, I'm sure its wrong but it looks cool.

As you near the climax the plot does get a little more emotional as members fall by the wayside one by one much like all disaster flicks do and this does keep you glued to the screen somewhat, its very predictable but you wanna see it through.

I think the plot is well worked in this film, it seems like an impossible task but the theories of how you could actually jump start the center of the earth are clever I guess, you know its not real but it looks and sounds like it could be. I also liked the craft design they use, the 'space' suits and all the science guff they babble when the heat is on (no pun intended), a shame the ending is so flat but it beats the over blown all American showboating you got in 'Armageddon'.
March 17, 2012
phubbs1

Super Reviewer

The Core is one perfect example of a terrible film that should've never been made. What's stunning about this film is that it has a good cast of talented actor, aside from D.J. Qualis, who was always a terrible actor. I can't believe the amount of really good actors who acted in this pile of junk. The film is yet another "save the world" type of film and is focused on reigniting the earth's core. However, the films plot is so poorly conceived that you lose interest in watching the film, and wonder why you even bothered with the film in the first place. This cast cannot save the world or this film for that matter, and when you have a seventeen year old as the head of the operation, you know you have a really bad film in the can. This film fails as a disaster film and as an action movie. When I originally saw this at the time of its release, this was the worst that I had seen. The Core has a great cast of talented actors, but even that doesn't save this lacking, and mediocre story. This is one of the worst action films that has come out of Hollywood, and really makes the disaster genre an irrelevant bad joke. This is a film that should be avoided. The great cast is wasted here, and they shouldn't have ever made this stupid, ridiculous.
August 24, 2011
TheDudeLebowski65
Jeff "The Dude" Lebowski

Super Reviewer

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Foreign Titles

  • Fusion - The Core (FR)
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