I have occasionally been flamed for my opinions regarding the film Armageddon. While most comments are comprised of poorly strung together profanity or other sloped-forehead examples of stupidity, the few that are actually thoughtful wonder why I simply can't accept Armageddon as entertainment.

My answer to them is The Core.

I should point out that I have a soft spot for a good disaster movie. Armageddon wanted to be such a disaster movie, but it wasn't even close. You see, a true disaster movie follows a structure that is chiseled in stone. To deviate from the formula is to completely miss the point of why to make the movie at all.

The Core knows its roots (and yes, readers, I know that statement is dangerously close to being a bad pun). I'm talking about films like The Towering Inferno and The Poseidon Adventure. The premise is this: Gather an ensemble cast of talented actors, place said actors into a fantastic situation of misfortune and then let them struggle to survive using only their wits.

There is one other important element to these disaster movies and its one that modern movies tend to shy away from. In a good disaster flick, most of the main characters die, one at a time and generally in a final act of extreme heroism. That's almost unthinkable in today's world of Top Billing, where actors want to be the hero, but they also want to live to see the end credits roll.

The Core, however, follows the rules and part of the fun is in figuring out which actors will bite it. True students of the genre may even be able to guess the order (I was only slightly off myself).

The story of The Core begins with scientific fact, that the Earth's core helps to protect us from many of the dangers of space by generating an electromagnetic shield around the planet. Beyond that, the film cheerfully and with no apologies tosses logic and fact clean out the window. In fact, rather than even try to invent plausible science for a crucial scene involving the construction of the ship to travel to the center of the planet, the writers cheekily call the construction material "unobtainium," a common scientific name for a mythical material that would solve any given problem.

This is a film that knows its place.

The Core begins when, oddly enough, the Earth's core stops spinning. With no more electromagnetic shield, crazy things being to happen all over the globe: Birds, who rely on magnetism for navigation, suddenly go nuts; giant microwave beams melt the Golden Gate bridge; massive electrical storms break out all over the planet; the aurora borealis moves south to Washington DC. The end result of this is that all life on Earth will end within months. The only hope for mankind is to figure out a way to get down to the core and start it spinning again.

I've avoided naming the stars of this film thus far for the simple reason that there are so many of them that I couldn't possibly devote enough room to talk about them all. Suffice it to say that they all inhabit characters that are fully expected in a disaster film. We get the Guy Who Knows The Truth, the Smug Know-It-All, the Talented But Cocky Pilot, the Seasoned Veteran, The Geek Who Saves The Day and so on and so forth. I'm not putting down the film with my character descriptions, rather I'd have been disappointed if these cliches weren't present.

The Core is one of those films that you must appreciate for what it is, not what you think it should be. Is it a good film? Not really. But it is a very slick and well done bad film and as such, it's a lot of fun, has some great special effects and not at all an unenjoyable two hours.