The fact that I couldn't find one friend to come with me to see The Core should've been a hint that I shouldn't see this movie. I have to admit, though, I'm a sucker for epic disaster flicks and this one scored high on that particular Richter scale.

I won't deny it, The Core is the ultimate rip-off of Armageddon, minus the star power and the location inside of the Earth rather than away from it. Simply put, however, it was still a fun (albeit dumb) flick.

We are even introduced to the plot in a similar fashion as its meteor-focused counterpart, with a foreboding introduction hinting at things worse to come for the people of Earth. Much to anyone's utter lack of surprise, it is explained that the Earth's core has stopped spinning and, unless it's started up again, all life on the planet will be dead in a matter of months.

Aside from a few neat catastrophic moments, the real adventure takes an hour to get on its feet when our "terranauts" finally enter the planet's core. Because no one knows what the inside of the Earth looks like in reality, one can easily tell that the special effects team had a fun time coming up with visuals for the molten core, something that pretty much resembles my computer's screen saver.

While predictable and occasionally laughable, I can't say I hated this movie. We all need a film from the "dumb but fun" genre from time to time, and the movie succeeds admirably.

-- Reviewed by Jason Cox