DIRECTED BY: Brad Silberling
FEATURING: Will Ferrell, Anna Friel, Danny McBride
PLOT: Obnoxious scientist Rick Marshall discovers a way to go “sideways” in time to a world of dinosaurs, ape men, and lizard-like sleestaks in this science fantasy comedy.
WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: It’s quite a challenge to adapt a 1970s television show about a family lost in a world of dinosaurs and alien creatures and not make it come off as too weird for mainstream audiences, but Brad Siberling managed this feat. Other than a narcotic-induced group hallucination involving an exploding crab, the only truly weird thing about this critical flop is that the producers chose to reimagine a crazy cult kids’ show as a standard comedy to accommodate the talents of star Will Ferrell, thereby thumbing their noses at the potentially lucrative nostalgia market.
COMMENTS: The Land of the Lost is a sloppily crafted piece of Hollywood entertainment. The jokes, frequently involving dinosaur pee and poop, are unimaginative and clearly aimed at middle school boys. The plot is too episodic, with the stranded travelers wandering from set piece to set piece instead of creating tension and forward momentum in their quest to find the lost “tachyon amplifier” and return to their own world. The script is awful, with minimal regard for logic or internal consistency: we get a doctoral candidate who is inexplicably able to translate alien ape tongues simply because it’s easier than thinking up a clever way to communicate by pantomime. Antagonists disappear, without being dispatched, when they’re no longer needed. It’s lazy screenwriting that screams “Will Ferrell’s signed, we’ve already made a fortune off this thing. Let’s just grind out five acceptable punchlines for the trailer, knock off early and get this check deposited.” The supporting characters are bland, but the biggest problem with the movie is with Will Ferrell’s Dr. Marshall. He’s arrogant, dim, easily annoyed, weak-willed and vindictive, and there’s no reason for the audience to root for him. Of course, by the middle of the film he undergoes standard-issue “character growth,” consisting of a speech on how he’s decided to mend his ways. Now, we are now supposed to approve when he gets the girl, even though he’s still the same jerk he always was. Yet, despite all these faults, Land of the Lost is actually not an irredeemably terrible movie. It’s tolerable, in that insidious way Hollywood has of taking mediocre ingredients and making them palatable by pumping up the pace, throwing in a little spectacle, and focusing on pretty faces roaming around in pretty places. The sets are imaginative and interesting, often consisting of stray junk (like an ice cream truck and a filled motel pool) that’s been sucked through a wormhole and plopped into the wilderness. The action sequences are kinetic, if nonsensical at times. Ferrell’s character and the script’s disregard for logic are annoying—the movie seems to taunt you with its lack of craftsmanship—but Land of the Lost is never boring, and it will play fine for its intended audience of tween boys.
Going in to the movie, I knew it would be bad; I was hoping it would be a delightfully huge bomb, which can make for a fun time, rather than the forgettable attempt it turned out to be. By design, summer blockbusters marketed to mass audiences have little weird potential, but I felt obliged to check it out due to sprinkled quotes like the one from Eric Snider (below) and these others: “surprisingly bizarre” (N.V. Cooper, “E” Online), “[a]lways weird” (Todd Maurstad, The Dallas Morning News), “[t]his is one very weird movie” (Joanna Langfield), “aggressively weird” (Brian Juergens), “incredibly strange experience” (Edward Douglas), “too damn bizarre to hate” (Luke Thompson). That sounds like a lot of votes for weird, but to put things in perspective, out of dozens and dozens of reviews, about the same number of critics thought the film was “funny.”
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
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Over 30 years later, this production’s power and legend remains undiminished. It was the first complete filmed “Ring” and is now looked upon by most as pioneering and the greatest of it’s kind.