10,000 BC

Review by Sean Lynch

Epic Landscapes: Check.

Other Worldly Beasts: Check

Unexplored Cinematic Territory: Check

Blockbuster Director: Check

Walking into 10,000 B.C you could be, as a movie fan at least, excused for being a tad excited. There is very little it doesn't have going for it. In fact, if I were a studio executive, I would be positively salivating at the Box Office prospects of such a concept.

Yet, none of that seems to be able to save 10,000 B.C being one big cinematic yawn.

Set in 10000 BC (obviously), the flick transports us back to a time when man and beast were untamed and the mighty mammoth (essentially Sesame Street's Snuffolupocus with tusks) roamed the earth. A time where "wise elders" beliefs were taken as fact, and mythology was born.

There is a story thrown, rather forcefully, into proceedings - as we trek along with a young hunter (Steven Strait, he of dreadlocks, muddy face, yet strangely well groomed goatee beard) on his quest to lead an army across a vast desert. On the way he must battle saber tooth tigers, prehistoric predators in the form of enormous dodo/chickens, as well as unearthing a whole swag of lost civilizations... and of course, this is all in an attempt to rescue the woman he loves (Camilla Belle).

Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow) is by no means clean of cinematic sins. Much like Michael Bay, he's pretty much a 'Style Over Substance' sort of director. However, as we've come to realise, that's not always a bad thing. Sometimes a no-brainer spectacle is all we really need on a Friday night. However, 10,000 B.C is so far wide of the mark - it's upsetting, because its such a waste of a cool concept.

The major problem here (and there are many), is plain and simple: not enough of the visuals the trailer so brazenly promised.

Storyline, character development, depth - all things which we can quite easily forgive for being absent from a film which was likely pitched in one sentence. But lack of action and prehistoric monsters? That's nigh unforgivable!

From all accounts, I went in expecting a friggin zoo of history, full of crashing, crunching and blood, I wanted The Lost World: Jurassic Park - that's what our good friend the trailer promised! And what's the reality? About 15 minutes in total of CGI, which one can only assume was inter spliced from VHS copies of the poorer spin-off series' of the BBC's Walking With Dinosaurs.

It seems the one time the audience would be quite ready and willing to bypass a storyline in favour of action, Emmerich has inexplicably attempted to inject some form of substance. But he does that so poorly (how actors can be told to speak like monosyllabic cavemen... and still come off as bad actors is beyond me) - he's left with little else to impress.

The rare moments we do actually get to see some action, it's somewhat anti-climactic. There's simply nothing new on offer which we have seen before. Peter Jackson and Spielberg set benchmarks with creatures of the past in King Kong and Jurassic Park - so more than a decade on, you really have to bring your A Game. And sadly, we are stuck with more storyline (for some reason half the flick is wasted revealing the creation of Pyramids) and forced romance (how a ten year old can talk of love and the stars after meeting a girl for 3 seconds is pushing is slightly) than three or four Emmerich flicks squished together.

It's not tough to berate a Roland Emmerich flick for being kind of crap. But, generally, they are crap in that 'Popcorn-So-Bad-They're-Good' sort of way. 10,000 BC is kind of crap - be even worse - it's a tad boring as well.

A dated film which could have been vastly improved by taking advantage of the new Beowulf 3D technology now available, sadly meaning 10,000 B.C would have worked much better had we seen 10 years earlier....

2 out of 5

10,000 BC
Australian release: 6th March, 2008
Cast: Camilla Belle, Steven Strait, Cliff Curtis, Omar Sharif
Director: Roland Emmerich
Website: 10,000 BC