Land of the Lost [Blu-ray]
by Brad Silberling
![Land of the Lost [Blu-ray]](/images/Land-of-the-Lost-Blu-ray-B002IKIHE6-L.jpg)
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Blu-ray details
Actor: Anna Friel, Danny McBride, John Boylan, Jorma Taccone, Will FerrellDirector: Brad Silberling
Brand: NBC Universal
Blu-ray: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language); Spanish (Original Language); French (Original Language); French (Dubbed); Spanish (Dubbed)
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, Dubbed, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 102 minutes
Blu-ray Release Date: 2009-10-13
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Universal
Blu-ray Reviews of Land of the Lost [Blu-ray]
Blu-ray Review: Where Time Has No Meaning
Summary: 3 Stars
There are some movies that genuinely work hard at being preposterous and looking phony, and "Land of the Lost" is definitely one of them. This movie is in fact so preposterous and phony that it's actually kind of fun. Consider the appearance of the dreaded Sleestaks, lizard-like creatures with big, bulbous eyes and lots of sharp teeth; I could tell that costume designer Mark Bridges was intentionally going for the cheesy 1950s B-movie look (the only thing missing was the zipper running down the front of the suit). Also consider the haphazard appearance of the locations; in this alternate dimension, it's apparently permissible for sprawling deserts, muggy swamps, and towering volcanoes to be so geographically close to one another. And only in such a place would bits and pieces of real architecture, such as motels and bridges, poke out of the sand like forgotten ruins. And to think this movie was given a $100,000,000 budget. I'm reminded of a Dolly Parton quote, given in reference to her trademark image: "It takes a lot of money to look this cheap."
Where this movie goes wrong is in its tone. For a concept that's inherently family friendly, I was surprised at just how crude "Land of the Lost" turned out to be, with swearing and sexual innuendos pushing the boundaries of its PG-13 rating. I'm not saying that I'm against swearing and sexual innuendo--I'm saying that, for this particular story, it was stylistically out of place. While I wasn't yet born when the original Sid and Marty Krofft TV series was on the air, I understand that it was a Saturday morning event made for kids. Judging by the scenes breast-grabbing, the references to heavy narcotics, and the unsavory moment when Will Ferrell douses himself with dinosaur urine, it seems that writers Chris Henchy and Dennis McNicholas and director Brad Silberling wanted the feature film to appeal to immature eighteen year olds.
The story: Ferrell plays Dr. Rick Marshall, who loses all credibility when Matt Lauer of NBC's "Today" trashes his theories on inter-dimensional portals. By reaching into another dimension, Marshall claims, we would be able to import all sorts of new fossil fuels, which in turn would solve our current energy crisis. Lauer, who says that Marshall's book can be found in the I'm Out of My Freakin' Mind department of a bookstore, is quick to point out that respected scientific minds like Stephen Hawking think this theory is utterly ridiculous. This interview goes so badly that Marshall is reduced to teaching science to apathetic children in a subpar classroom.
Along comes Holly Cantrell (Anna Friel), a British scientist who was kicked out of Cambridge for believing that Marshall's theories have any merit. She convinces him to follow her to the desert, bringing with him a machine of his own design: A tachyon amplifier, which, for reasons too complicated and inconsequential to mention, is able to produce time warps. It also repeatedly plays the song "I Hope I Get It" from "A Chorus Line," and again, it's for inconsequential reasons. In the desert, Marshall and Holly meet Will Stanton (Danny McBride), a clueless survivalist who runs a hopelessly fake tourist attraction called Devil's Cave, sort of a funhouse crossed with a badly navigated raft ride.
When Marshall turns on his tachyon machine, the entire cave suddenly rumbles to life, sending our three heroes over an impossibly massive waterfall and into a swirling vortex, one that leads to a parallel dimension. They've officially arrived in the Land of the Lost, a bizarre world populated by super intelligent dinosaurs, mosquitoes that can drink 1,000 times their weight in human blood, and a sex-crazed half-monkey creature named Cha-Ka (Jorma Taccone), who quickly becomes their companion. In due time, it becomes a matter of life and death, the Sleestaks threatening to reign supreme as masters of the universe.
It's amazing how selective I can be when suspension of disbelief is required. I was able to accept, for example, that Holly just happens to understand and speak Cha-Ka's language, which is really just a series of grunts mixed with prehistoric gobbledygook. I was also able to accept the appearance of a gigantic crab, which runs across the distant desert landscape before falling through a patch of thin sand into boiling water, which, apparently, is what flows underground. However, as Marshall, Stanton, and Cha-Ka chow down on cooked pieces of claw, I noticed they were spraying their food with a humongous wedge of lemon. I just sat there and wondered, "Where did they find such a big lemon?" There's not one scene that shows or even mentions the existence of extra large citrus groves.
But that's not the real problem here. While "Land of the Lost" achieves much with its campy visuals and implausible plot, it doesn't get very far with its juvenile dialogue and sophomoric gags. It's as if the film were trying to be a parody of the TV series, which is ridiculous since the series was so badly made that it was essentially a parody to begin with. The end result is a disappointing film, something could have been a lot more fun if only it been a little more family-oriented. This obviously would not work for all films, and please believe me when I say that I wasn't hoping for a cutesy romp about jolly boys and girls. I just wanted a tamer film, something that spent less time on Cha-Ka's obsession with Holly's chest and more time keeping its tongue planted in its cheek. The costumes and sets can be wonderfully shabby, but you should never skimp on the quality of a screenplay.
Description of Land of the Lost [Blu-ray]
Comedic genius Will Ferrell stars as has-been scientist Dr. Rick Marshall, who gets more than he bargained for when his expedition takes a wrong turn into the Land of the Lost. Now, Marshall, his crack-smart research assistant Holly (Anna Friel) and a redneck survivalist named Will (Danny McBride), have no weapons, few skills and questionable smarts to survive in a world full of marauding dinosaurs, fantastic creatures and laugh-out-loud comedy!How to make a big-screen version of Sid and Marty Krofft's Seventies TV show? In this case, place the thing in the meaty hands of Will Ferrell and give the special effects a big upgrade. If you grew up with the show, you will recall that Marshall, Will, and Holly fall through a time warp into a land where dinosaurs roam and all kind of weird things grow. In this version, Ferrell plays a disgraced scientist, Anna Friel a brainy postgraduate, and Danny McBride (Pineapple Express) the sleazy owner of a desert tourist trap that happens to be home to the time portal. This begins to suggest how this movie wants to have it both ways: keep some of the original's kid appeal, but raunch it up just enough for fans of Judd Apatow's movies. The result is that nothing really works very well. There's no momentum to the plot, the locations are monotonous, and Ferrell and McBride are desperate in their attempts to generate something out of nothing. Granted, they succeed a few times--these guys are too funny to whiff completely--but the strain is visible. And although the effects, are competent, the movie can't even get its fantasy rules straight (why is the T. Rex sometimes ferocious and sometimes indifferent?). Fans of the show will enjoy hearing the cheesy theme song worked in (Ferrell performs a zonked version) and seeing how the movie updates the menacing Sleestaks. But on a basic level Land of the Lost has no idea what it's doing, or what it means to do. --Robert Horton
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