A world that needs saving from insurmountable destructive forces by a bickering team who eventually compromise and complete their objective is one of the trite movie clichés in existence. The only thing different is that “The Core” delves into the earth, rather than outer space, which is a common crutch the genre of sci-fi/action/thriller falls onto.

“The Core,” which draws obvious cues from Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth, begins with geophysicist Dr. Josh Keyes (Aaron Eckhart) and weapons specialist Dr. Serge Leveque (Tcheky Karyo) entering a military warehouse doubling as a morgue filled with victims of an electromagnetic attack. This is the opening into the main problem of the movie—the core of the earth stopped spinning due to reasons which will become painfully obvious later in the movie.

The movie segues to a hilarious scene in which tourists in London are all of a sudden assaulted by a flock of birds that have gone utterly insane, crashing into windows and flying high speed into peoples’ faces. The cause of the flock going berserk is the same as the sudden death of the people in the beginning of the movie.

The other characters proceed to be introduced in ridiculous ways. Major Rebecca “Beck” Childs (Hilary Swank) and Colonel Robert Iverson (Bruce Greenwood) must perform a crash landing with their shuttle in the Los Angeles River, a drainage ditch several miles long. Dr. Conrad Zimsky (Stanley Tucci) is a prominent physicist who discloses Keyes’s research done on the electromagnetic phenomena to a group of government officials where it is learned that the Earth’s core has stopped spinning.

What does this mean for humanity? The end of the world, of course. The cast flies over to the Salt Flats of Utah to meet up with recluse scientist, and the only decent character in the movie, Dr. Ed “Braz” Brazzelton. Bad blood exists between Brazzelton and Zimsky, which ultimately comes to a mini-climax later on. During his twenty years of solitude, Braz has been working on a project that eventually allows the team to travel to the core of the Earth.

Implausible event after implausible event occurs throughout the remainder of the movie leading to a plotline that would require serious head trauma to believe. Much of the acting is over-dramatized, but the absence of a love story is a relief. I didn’t like “Armageddon” when I saw it, and I don’t like it now, even if what is threatening the Earth has moved inside of it, rather an external threat. However, “The Core” might be enjoyable if you go into it not expecting a deep plot or amazing dialog.