This might be one of the best comedies out there right now (or it will be when it opens next week). Oh wait, you thought THE CORE was a end-of-the-world-type sci-fi piece done much in the spirit of DEEP IMPACT or ARMAGEDDON. No, no, no. This movie is clearly a comedy. Just look at Stanley Tucci’s hairpiece and it’s clear. Does that mean it’s no good? Actually, no. I was wildly entertained by this film. I couldn’t wait to see what sorts of crap computer science, double-crap geophysics, and triple-crap every other kind of science the writers came up with. The other critics at my screening (including Ebert and Roeper) were howling with laughter at several points during this film, but I’m not completely convinced the laughs weren’t deliberate.

The reason films like ARMAGEDDON seem even slightly plausible is because the technology exists to do the job at hand. We have Space Shuttles, we have nuclear weapons. In theory, blowing up a giant asteroid seems possible. In THE CORE, almost none of the technology exists, so basically the writers come up with the problem that threatens the earth (the earth’s core stops spinning, thus the electromagnetic field that surrounds the planet is decreasing rapidly and letting in dangerous solar rays that threaten to burn us up in less than a year), then they invent the technology our heroes need to bore into the earth’s center and set off nuclear charges to get the core spinning again. In case you hadn’t heard, such technology doesn’t exist.

What I liked about THE CORE was the cast and the almost relaxed and informal way the characters act around each other. There are many deliberate laughs to be had in this film, and the audacity of the plot just kind of adds to the entertainment value of the movie. Aaron Eckhart, Tcheky Karyo, and Stanley Tucci are the scientists who discover the problem and figure out how to solve it. Hilary Swank and Bruce Greenwood are the shuttle pilots chosen to drive a newly developed vehicle into the center of the earth. Delroy Lindo is the wacky inventor who has conquered the unbelievably high pressures and temperatures under the earth’s surface by building this craft that resembles a giant metal worm. The dumbest character in the film is a teenager named Rat (D.J. Qualls), a computer hacker hired by the government to make certain that no news agency on the planet picks up on the core problem or how the American’s are planning on fixing it, or as he puts it, “You want me to hack the world?”

The effects shots in the film are hit and miss, but mostly hit. I loved the Space Shuttle emergency landing scene in the beginning of the film, and some of the geographic anomalies that the “terranauts” run into in the earth’s mantle look cool. But in the scenes where the ship is plowing through molten magma, it looks like a video game from the early ‘90s. THE CORE has some hit-you-over-the-head messages about messing with mother nature, being a leader, and self-sacrifice that don’t really add anything to the proceedings, but I can’t deny it. The movie kept me giddy with anticipation. THE CORE is not a great movie, it may not even be a good movie, but I had fun with it. Director Jon Amiel (ENTRAPMENT) also thankfully avoids the ultra-slick, music-video-type style and soundtrack that killed some of the other recent disaster films. In other words, if you go in with low expectations, you’ll probably have a great time watching THE CORE. The actors are clearly having fun with it, and so should you. Just be sure to check your intelligence at the box office. The film opens next week.

HEAD OF STATE

Right after I whizzed through THE CORE, I stayed for Chris Rock’s latest, HEAD OF STATE, which Rock also directed and co-wrote. Buzz kill, anyone? HEAD OF STATE is the horribly underwritten tale of D.C. Alderman Mays Gilliam (Rock) who is selected by what I assume is the Democratic party to run for President of the United States when the previous candidate and vice-candidate die about two months before the election. At first Gilliam does what his campaign handlers tell him, but when he decides during one Chicago speech to “be himself,” his campaign takes off. Lynn Whitfield and Dylan Baker play the handlers (apparently it takes only two people to run a presidential campaign). Originally, Gilliam was picked because the party thought it would make them look good even though they knew he didn’t have a chance of winning, but when his numbers start soaring, everybody panics. Mays picks as his running mate, his brother Mitch, played by the film’s only bright spot, Bernie Mac. But don’t be fooled by the trailers for HEAD OF STATE: Mac is barely in the film, and when he is on screen, he struggles with the lame material. Rounding out the supporting cast are forgettable performances by Robin Givens as Gilliam’s stalking ex-girlfriend and Tamala Jones as his new love interest.

Based on the speeches that Mays gives during various rallies, it seems clear to me that Rock thought he was making a message movie, some type of political satire cloaked in a no-brained comedy. If that’s the case, he failed. If it’s not the case, he failed even more. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Chris Rock in a PG-13 movie WILL NOT WORK. I can see him holding back from blurting out ever curse word he knows. And the few times he gets to swear, there’s a twinkle in his eye. Give the man room to breathe, Hollywood. I realize that with Rock writing and directing this, he has no one but himself to blame, but he probably wouldn’t have gotten the deal to make HEAD OF STATE unless he agreed to a PG-13 rating. But what’s worse about HEAD OF STATE is that not a word or scene rings true. It’s as if the writers knew nothing about what a real political campaign is like. And in this day and age of “The West Wing” and dozens of news channels following a presidential candidate’s every move, every person in America knows this is not how things work in politics. HEAD OF STATE of is oversimplified, underwhelming, and simply not funny. The film opens next week.

DYSFUNKTIONAL FAMILY

Ah, comedy in it’s purest form. I wasn’t really getting Eddie Griffin until I saw him in UNDERCOVER BROTHER last year, a vastly underrated movie that had me giggling like a maniac pretty consistently. But DYSFUNKTIONAL FAMILY puts Griffin back where he belongs: on stage in front of a live audience, free to say anything and everything. He’s so comfortable working a crowd that I’m actually envious. But what sets this concert film off from recent works from The Original Kings of Comedy or Martin Lawrence are the documentary aspects of it.

Griffin spends a great deal of act talking about growing up with a tight-knit family in a Kansas City ghetto. These are people that he clearly loves, but that doesn’t save them having their eccentricities exposed in front of thousands. And many of the people Griffin in talking about are in the front row of the show. As Griffin begins to talk about a family member, we cut to a short profile of that person. We meet his mother; his uncle who used to show young Eddie porno tapes starring him; and various aunts.

We quickly realize that as outrageous as some of the behavior Griffin describes sounds, he’s not exaggerating about any of it. The story about his mother trying to run him down with her car sounds made up, until we cut to her telling exactly the same story. Griffin also hits on just about every hot-button topic around today, including terrorism, Michael Jackson, and sex sex sex.

I loved the KINGS OF COMEDY film to death, but DYSFUNKTIONAL FAMILY is even funnier, and the look into the place where Griffin comes from adds an extra dimension to the movie that puts it in a category with the best work of Richard Pryor. Griffin isn’t telling jokes, he’s telling stories that just happen to be hilarious. The great movie opens April 4.

HOLES

I spent some time recently with my pre-teenage cousin, and I asked him if he’d ever heard of a film called HOLES. He said, “No, but I read a book called Holes.” Suddenly this movie made a little more sense, which is not to say that knowing HOLES is based on a popular children’s novel by Louis Sachar makes it anything more than a boring, overlong piece of crap.

It’s the same old story: HOLES is a film where all of the kids are bright, all of the adults are idiots, and anyone in a position of authority is evil. There’s a whole backstory to HOLES involving a family curse on the men of the Yelnats family. The youngest male Yelnats is Stanley IV (Shia LaBeouf), whose father, Stanley III (Henry Winkler), is a highly unsuccessful inventor who is trying to invent a chemical that will eliminate shoe odor. (I can feel my eyes rolling back in my head just writing about this movie.) Through a pointless series of events, the younger Stanley is sent to a juvenile detention center in the middle of the desert, where the warden (Sigourney Weaver) has her prisoners digging holes, claiming it’s a character-building exercise. In fact, she’s looking for a buried treasure hidden long ago by a female gunfighter named Kissin’ Kate Barlow (Patricia Arquette seen in flashbacks). Assisting the warden are heavies Mr. Sir (Jon Voight in full ham mode) and Mr. Pendanski (a painfully slumming Time Blake Nelson).

The other delinquents at the center have such colorful names as Squid, Armpit, X-Ray, Magnet, and Zig-Zag. With names like those, you know they’re bad-ass. Anyway the film jumps back and forth between the kids, Stanley’s worried parents, the wild west flashbacks, and a host of other hopelessly uninteresting subplots. I can’t remember the last time I was this bored in a film, and to make matters worse, HOLES clocks in at about two hours. What kid is going to sit through a two-hour film with virtually no special effects? Maybe kids who read the book will enjoy the film, but I can’t even fathom that being the case. The film is a snoozer! Director Andrew Davis (yes, the same Andrew Davis that directed THE FUGITIVE and UNDER SIEGE) has completely forgotten the definition of “pacing.” There is none in this film. I longed to crawl into one of the holes on the screen and be buried alive so I wouldn’t have to endure another second of this film. If I still haven’t dissuaded you from seeing HOLES, it’s slated to open April 18, but maybe if we start a letter-writing campaign to have every print destroyed...

Capone

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