The Core

Think Armageddon with even less class and subtlety and you're someway towards envisaging the horrors presented by The Core, an event picture so bloated and ridiculous that it doesn't even have the decency to take itself with a pinch of salt. Aaron Eckhart plays Dr Joshua Keyes, a Chicago professor who inadvertently discovers that the core of the earth (hence the title, folks) has stopped spinning. Needless to say, this is very bad and Keyes predicts that mankind has a year before the world ends. Thankfully, the US has a plan, which involves several people tunnelling to the centre of the earth in an indestructible machine, setting off a 1000 megatonne nuclear explosion - thus jolting the earth's core back into life - and saving mankind in the process. With the typical motley crew in place - astronauts (Hilary Swank and Bruce Greenwood), academics (a hammy Stanley Tucci, Tcheky Karyo, and Eckhart) and a mad inventor (Lindo) - off they go, drilling into the earth's core to save mankind.

Even by event movie standards, The Core is an intensely implausible mess, a hot-potch of scientific mumbo jumbo, which is unlikely to fool even the most undemanding audience. This would not be a major problem if the film wasn't so insistent on taking itself so seriously. Barely able to function on a level close to competent, The Core shudders along like the product of an unholy union between the aforementioned Armageddon and Deep Impact. Indeed, this picture is so wildly miscast (Hilary Swank as a space shuttle pilot? Please!), indifferent to basic logic and the fundamentals of suspenseful filmmaking that you can't help wondering whether it's actually some sort of post modern gag. I hope I missed the punchline but I doubt it.