Land of the Lost (2009)

This film, as the title suggests, is affiliated with the famous children's TV Series "Land of the Lost" from the 70s, which was about Rick Marshall, and his two children Holly and Will, who got stranded in a strange and mysterious worlds, where time and space collided. Now, this take on the story is a parody on the original story, with the same basic concept, but a more humorous storyline.

I have never seen the original TV Series, but I doubt it would have made too much of a difference. "Land of the Lost" is without a doubt one of the worst films of the year 2009; especially considering that I actually thought the movie looked pretty decent in the trailer. I will never know how such an interesting and original concept was screwed up so badly and turned into an unfunny and pointless mess.

Dr. Rick Marshall is ridiculed on national television after he suggests the existence of time warps that could be used to solve the worsening energy crisis. Reduced to teaching science classes at elementary school, Marshall drops his theories, until Cambridge student Holly shows up at the school, and urges him to test his tachyon amplifier, a device that can create the necessary energy waves to open those gates. They drive far out into the desert, where the crazy redneck Will is running a cave entertainment park. While giving them a rafting tour through the cave, Rick and Holly get the tachyon amplifier to work and the three fall down a massive waterfall. When they wake up, they find themselves in the middle of a desert, right next to a Viking ship, proving Rick's theory of an alternate dimension, where the past, present, and future collide. Unfortunately though they lost the tachyon amplifier and now can't get back home to prove to the world Rick's been right all along. After the saving a primate from being sacrificed by his own people, the little monkey-like creature named Cha-ka reluctantly guides them through the strange "land of the lost, which is inhabited by green aliens, large dinosaurs, and filled with objects from the human world.

Several words can be used to describe this film, among them being uninspired, dull, pointless and unfunny. The entire movie pretty much consists of the three main characters stumbling from one enormous mess into another, which for one reason or another doesn't turn out to be so dangerous after all. If you try really hard you might find the attempts of creating a plot once in a while, but all in all the entire thing is just all over place and never seems to find a point of focus. First the dinosaur appears, but when that "plot line" is finished after around ten minutes, the aliens are introduced about halfway through the film and they, of course, have the incredibly evil master plan of conquering the universe. The humor, which includes several sexual references, is childish and ridiculous, with many of the lines often not fitting with the scenes they are said in. And when the primitive monkey man Cha-ka has grabbed Holly's breasts for the fifth or sixth time, I just got really tired of it. To be fair, I laughed about half a dozen times in this film, once when Will Ferrell pours dinosaur urine all over himself in order to cover his human smell. It's really quite amazing how such a disaster was created with a $100 Million budget, and a director like Brad Silbering, who made "Casper" and "Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events", both great and inspired movies. Most of the blame here can be put on the writers, Chris Henchy and Dennis McNicholas, who both don't have too much experience writing comic dialog, and most of the punch lines just completely fall flat. Those unfortunately occur at least two or three times a minute, and it's just painful to see that if the script had been completely rewritten dialog-wise the film could have been so much better.

I'm really not the biggest fan of Will Ferrell, since most of his comedies tend to be hit and miss and often don't really work for me, and this film without a question belongs in the category "complete miss". Surprisingly though, I don't think Ferrell is really the one at fault, and if, once again, the script had been better, this could have been the perfect role for him. But here, he just stumbles around and has absolutely no chance against the horrendous words coming out of his mouth. The same goes for Danny McBride, who is the expert of sexual humor in this film, or at least he was probably supposed to be. While I thought he was amazing in "Tropic Thunder" last year, in here he pathetically fails at being funny. Anna Friel's role is not really a very comic one in the first place, and since she's incredibly serious among the two idiotic men accompanying her, there's not really that much bad stuff that can be said about her performance. Jorma Taccone though, as the primitive Cha-ka, is just plain awful, because even though he doesn't say too much, all of his attempts to be funny are somehow related to sexuality, and that's just not really my kind of humor.

"Land of the Lost" was definitely the biggest disappointment of the summer, and I actually really enjoyed the trailer, which literally contains all the funny moments of the film. Will Ferrell certainly didn't do himself a favor by taking on this role, even though it would be unfair to bash him alone for the failure to deliver a solid movie here. While "Land of the Lost" is not the worst film of all time, which is mainly due to the fascinating sets, the absolute majority of it was catastrophic and it would have been better if the entire project would have landed in the land of the lost.