the core
last night, in need of a diversion, paul and i combed the papers in search of a movie that would suck. it would have to suck in a very particular way: afterward, there must be no question that it blowed up real good.
the core sufficed nicely.
according to the times,
according to paul, marveling at the clumsily drawn characters, "someone must have really hated carl sagan."
according to me, "it blowed up real good. and stupidly."
it's just like any sci fi exploration movie you've ever seen: the carefully diverse crew takes on an impossible mission from which they surely cannot return alive. only...you know someone will: the plucky heroine and the tousled, stubbly hero.
the only suspense comes in trying to guess which order the supporting players will get picked off in, and the entertaining manner in which they'll meet their cheesy doom -- in this case, impaled by a mineral spike and dipped in nacho cheese (excuse me: lava); crushed inside a jettisoned compartment, garbage-compactor style; fried to a crisp in a space suit that's apparently not rated for 9,000 degrees; and, well, blowed up real good in a nuke-you-lar explosion. (our protagonist, a low-rent harrison ford type if ever there was one, can't pronounce "nuclear" correctly. but if the guy in charge of destroying the world can't, why should we care if the guy in charge of saving the world can't?)
as if all this weren't bad enough, throw in hollywood's idea of a teenage hacker, the gratuitous trashing of the antiquities of rome, and the rescue of our intrepid crew by a pod of friendly orca whales. mix well. and knock it all back with an audible shudder.
ahhhh. the rich taste of sucking.
Comments
THE CORE was truly a thing of beauty. At one particularly ridiculous point (I went with a group of friends, well-lubricated with Core Enhancement Juice) one of them announced to the theater at large: "This is the best movie EVER!" to general hilarity.
At least with the hacker, they did their research (cf. Hot Pockets).
Posted by: Cori | April 1, 2003 09:58 AM
ha! at one point during the movie, i leaned over to paul and bellowed in his ear, "there ain't THING ONE wrong with this movie." and, truly, there wasn't.
Posted by: julie | April 1, 2003 10:25 AM