dir. Amiel

Opens Fri March 28

Various Theaters

If you're anything like me, all this "war" talk has gotten you bluesier than a sorority girl with an empty frozen margarita machine. And while Hollywood excels in failing to provide an entertaining product just when we need it most, it's my happy duty to report that with The Core, they finally got it right. A throwback to the classic scientific adventure films of yesteryear (Fantastic Voyage, The Black Hole), The Core successfully revives a genre I didn't know I was missing.

Young hottie geology professor Josh Keyes (Aaron Eckhart) is yanked out of class one day by Federal agents to explain a score of unusual occurrences: People with pacemakers dropping dead, flocks of birds going wacko, and the space shuttle accidentally being forced to land in downtown Los Angeles. With the help of a Frenchie pal (Tchèky Karyo) and a Carl Sagan look-alike (Stanley Tucci), Josh figures out that the core of the earth has mysteriously stopped spinning. Who gives a crap, right? Well, you would, when the electromagnetic field started breaking down and your skin burst into flames.

The solution is simple enough: Hop into an earth-burrowing machine, dive to the center of the Earth, and blow up a few nukes to get the core restarted. Yeeee-HAW! And don't forget to bring along Hilary Swank and her big lips to help steer the ship.

Given, this is a ridiculous plot--but no more ridiculous than a bunch of shrunk-down scientists being inserted into a human body to blow up a life-threatening blood clot (that would be Fantastic Voyage--Raquel Welch and her big tits helped steer the ship in that one). It's pure fantasy, and expertly made fantasy at that. Director Jon Amiel, who's known for light but tightly entertaining fare like Copycat and Entrapment, knows how to handle material like this: Laugh off the plot holes, and keep things moving. The script zips right along, and there's an easy witty rapport between the actors. And while the ending may be a thin slice of cheese, the big budget special effects are restrained, exciting, and believable.

But the most fun part of The Core is its light and breezy tone. There's an innocence here that plays almost like a really good live-action Disney flick. Besides, in this time of desperate lies leading to desperate wars, what's not to like about a bunch of crackpot scientists whose only goal is to save the world?