The Core Reviews
Top Critic
Undigestible fusion of worst-case earth science and leaden pacing.
[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.
Jules Verne this isn't, but it makes for fairly diverting escapist fare.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
Scientists may shudder, but at least some good actors are getting work.
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| Original Score: 2/4
The Core works because the characters are idiosyncratic enough to seem authentic but not so zany that they seem contrived.
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| Original Score: 3/4
I never thought I'd see the day when I would write that someone like Qualls acts circles around Tucci, Jenkins or Lindo, some of our best actors.
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| Original Score: 2/4
Unblushingly tacky and derivative.
| Original Score: 2/4
This is one shelved project that should have stayed on the shelf.
| Original Score: 2/5
When taken as an old-fashioned adventure with a comic-book plot, The Core works well. But at 130 minutes it wears out its welcome, and like Earth's balky core, it sputters and stalls.
Full Review
| Original Score: C+
The Core is formulaic Hollywood swill done on such an epic scale of incompetency, it must be seen.
| Original Score: F
The Core is such a feat of go-for-broke heroism and you-gotta-be -kiddin'-me ridiculousness that it almost qualifies as a feel-good diversion -- with just a quarter of the runaway jingoism of your average disaster extravaganza.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
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.
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Despite its predictability, The Core offers a healthy serving of suspense and special effects.
| Original Score: 3/5
The Core follows such a familiar path that you can predict not only which crew members are going to be martyred, but in what order.
| Original Score: 2/4
I have such an unreasonable affection for this movie, indeed, that it is only by slapping myself alongside the head and drinking black coffee that I can restrain myself from recommending it.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
The Core may not rock your world, but it has its moments.
| Original Score: C+
The only pressing burden in this deep interior world is the question: What in or on Earth is a cast this good doing in a movie this ridiculous?
Full Review
| Original Score: 1/4
For all its predictability and cornball heroics, this adventure is as sleek and efficient as its inner-spacecraft.
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| Original Score: 3/4
The brazen silliness of The Core is becalming and inauthentic, like taking a bath in nondairy coffee creamer. The Earth core's inability to turn is mirrored in the cast's inability to give the picture any spin.
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| Original Score: 2/5
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.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
The Core is unabashed Hollywood spectacle, but with a cast of up-from-indie actors that makes the cataclysmic kitsch all the more fun to behold.
| Original Score: 3/4
Good science fiction awakens a sense of awe, and even mediocre sci-fi sometimes manages wonder. But The Core does neither.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
Preposterous? Absolutely, but director Jon Amiel seems to be in on the joke, pausing at regular intervals to laugh at the disaster genre in which he is engaged, then resuming the suspense and reeling us back in again.
Full Review
| Original Score: B-
It's a schlockier Armageddon crossed with Fantastic Voyage, minus the fun.
Full Review
| Original Score: C
More palatable than most pictures of its ilk due to its keen awareness of its own preposterousness, a self-knowledge exuberantly expressed by a mostly live-wire cast.
So howlingly awful that it has unwittingly found a place in that elite group of films that can claim to be 'so bad they're good.'
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
