Many adjectives come to mind when thinking of the movie Land of the Lost. Scattered. Stupid. Retarded. Especially retarded. I can’t really blame this one on Will Ferrell, he at least looks like he’s trying. Dan McBride doesn’t have much to do and looks like he’s checked out for at least part of this. Why is it so much more interesting to analyze bad movies than good? I guess it’s because Land of the Lost probably could’ve been a good movie.
I’ll give the movie makers this much credit, they actually watched Land of the Lost. They use the names and quite a bit of the stuff from the series, but here’s the problem. The series wasn’t very good and it wasn’t a movie. But at the same time, despite the slavish devotion to SOME elements, they completely change others. Like they make the Zarn a good guy and Enik evil (it was the reverse on the show). I watched every episode when I was a kid and I still didn’t remember that. So what was the point of using those characters only to betray their original intent? Even if I remembered the original TV show the way it was, they already made Rick and Holly lovers when they used to be father and daughter. The change gets you very little.
On top of that, the movie is just sloppily made. Things happen and then details go unexplained. One minute, the characters are being chased by two dinosaurs, the characters kill one, but the other just mysteriously leaves. It’s annoying. There are some funny moments and the sets are cool, but even that screws up the experience on a very basic level. At one point, the characters spot the Golden Gate Bridge in the background. So did the Golden Gate bridge disappear from Earth? It’s never established. The lazy scriptwriters spout some gobblety-gook about other dimensions where the past, present and future combine. Makes no sense.
From a character stand point, the three main characters are strangers, another bad, rookie scriptwriting move. They have no history to draw from, so Danny McBride is left with very little to work with. Plus when an ice cream truck driver is eaten by dinosaurs and the characters do nothing but watch, it’s painfully obvious that the poor guy is some no-name actor. He doesn’t even get a line. It’s just for a cheap gag with a dinosaur running off with his scooping arm. Lazy.
I only went to see this because Year One just opened and didn’t start until midnight. Oh, how I wished we had waited. Will Ferrel owes me ten bucks. I give this movie 2 out of 10 keggers. It’s definitely a cable TV movie. Probably good to watch when you’re high.
