This week's new Science Fiction release, The Core, is a fun ride, but you need to check your scientific knowledge and calculators at the door.

The basic premise (you can see all of this in the trailer) is that the core of the Earth has stopped spinning and our intrepid band of mismatched misfits needs to fix it with an experimental ship and a few nukes (origin: humorous).

I'll credit the scientific advisors for making some of the details make sense. This is what makes the movie much less annoying than many pictures of this sort. Most of the explanations of scientific principles are limited to very basic stuff (mostly being explained to non-scientists) and are explained in reasonably accurate terms. Many other pseudo-scientific films spend too much time trying to show how intelligent they are and unfortunately end up annoying anyone with a modicum of scientific knowledge with overused inaccurate details and catch phrases.

The acting is good enough not to be distracting. Nobody is going to be getting an Oscar for this film, but they won't end up on the list of worst acting of 2003 either.

The pace of the film is also quite good, despite the 2:10 length. There are some twists, but it is pretty predictable. The bad guys are obvious, the conspiracies are too, but neither of those stop the basic plot from working enough to give you a couple hours of fun.

Did I mention some pretty cool special effects?