Funny / The Core

• Near the end, Zimsky is, once again, waxing philosophic into his recorder. Suddenly, he stops and realizes that he's locked alone inside one of the Virgil's ejected sections, he's submerged in the molten core of the Earth, and he's next to a nuclear bomb that's seconds away from detonation. He lowers the recorder and says, "What the fuck am I doing?" He literally dies laughing moments later.
• The film's epitome of faulty science, and depending on your view, possibly the biggest case of everyone/everything in the movie being in on the joke (more in Fridge Brilliance):
  Josh (casually): So, we hotwire the nukes, as one does. We seed them through the core at locations that have to be accurate to the inch. We detonate them in a sequence that has to be accurate to the millisecond. Then we outrun the biggest nuclear shockwave in history.
  Zimsky: Right
  Braz: Yeah
  Josh: (beat) Well, that should be fairly simple.
  • Also, once the Virgil has returned, but is lying on the ocean floor, powerless:
  Beck: Okay, Let's assess. We've got no communications. We're probably 800 feet down, but we might as well be 800 miles. We're in an unobtanium cigar tube withe the sonar signature of a rock. We've got just enough power to make the ultrasonics burp, but no one's listening on those frequencies anyway. And, nobody even knows we're alive.
  Josh: Okay. Gimme a minute on this one.
• Watch closely during the scene of pigeons going berserk in Trafalgar Square when a few of them are flying into windows: one of them is actually a flying fish!
• While the space shuttle is crash-landing, it emits a sonic boom during a flyover of Dodger Stadium.
  • The landing itself merits some laughs as it careens through the Los Angeles River, coming to a stop just short of construction workers on scaffolding. One worker didn't even notice anything going on until he turned off his equipment and turned around, only to be nose to nose with the shuttle!
• Zimsky's endless ribbing of Braz. It's unforgivably Jerkass, but it is funny.
  Purcell: Doctor Brazzleton, I see you know Doctor Zimsky.
  Braz: Yeah. Twenty years ago he stole my research. After that we kind of lost touch.
  Zimsky: Research that was equally mine.
  Braz: That's funny, I never saw a check from any of the patents...
  Zimsky: All right, Braz. Twenty years in the desert makes you a prophet and a martyr...
• After his presentation, Braz is asked what it would take to develop Virgil in three months instead of a decade. Braz, with a laugh, says it would take fifteen billion dollars:
  Purcell: Will you take a check?
  Josh: Why don't you use a credit card? You get miles.
• The film's opening scene has a businessman about to begin speaking in a boardroom. He suddenly falls forward onto the glass table, and the way his face smushes onto the table from below makes it a far funnier scene than it should be.
• Rat groping Keyes as he walks by.
• When the surviving crew decide to continue their mission into the core instead of using Project Destiny to restart the core, Zimsky snaps and throws a temper tantrum, calling Virgil a "floating septic tank" and yelling in everyone's face to turn the ship around. Braz tries to talk him down, until Zimsky turns and tells him to shut up. In response, Braz punches him in the face, knocking him out cold.
  Braz: (sheepishly) It's not a stupid ship.

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