review of the english movie 10000B.C

For generations historians have wondered how the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids. It has been one of the great mysteries of civilization. Well, director Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow) has solved it for us all. They had mammoths to help them. Mammoths. Kind of like big, furry pack mules. Wait until The History Channel hears about this!!!

I'd better give you the synopsis before I go any further down the grocery list of badness...10,000 BC is the story of D'Leh (Steven Strait), a young mammoth hunter in the snowy mountains. He and his tribe are in trouble as the fuzzy guys are disappearing. He falls in love with Evolet (Camilla Belle), an unusually blue-eyed girl his tribe adopts after her family is killed. (I say unusually blue-eyed, not because the rest of them have brown eyes, which they do. I say it because they're the worst blue contacts I've ever seen! What, there weren't aaaany blue-eyed actresses in Hollywood?) When Evolet and a few others are kidnapped by a band of warlords, D'Leh, his mentor Tic Tic (Cliff Curtis)...yes, a grown man named Tic Tic, and D'Leh's young "sidekick" (in the most Anime sense of the word) Baku (Nathaneal Baring) cross the world to save them. Along the way they must fight "terror birds", (I did NOT make that up. "Terror birds" is straight from the production notes) saber tooth muppets...I mean, tigers, and elements of all kinds. They are joined by other tribes who have lost people to the slave raiders, and together they march on to "Egypt" to free their people from a tyrannical god in chiffon...

Let me begin with the creatures. First the "terror birds". If you can't think up a better name for the production notes, what does that say about your ability to write a script? I'm just saying... They are like giant turkey/ostriches from a Sci-Fi Channel Original Movie. You've seen 'em. You know what I mean. Badly rendered giant turkey heads popping up from the grasslands does not promote a sense of realism. Is this how we get around not being able to use dinosaurs? Might as well throw them in too! What the hell? Then there are the mammoths. Really pretty hair, which is saying a lot since most of the actors had god awful wigs. But half the time it looked like they were in a different movie. Ever watch a sitcom and the characters go out for a drive? The background is so bad that you wonder why they didn't just spring for the tinted windows? Yeah. And the muppet cat. Look, if you're going to make a movie that centers around CGI creatures, could you at least pretend to care if the cat looks fake? He's a saber tooth tiger! He's on half the posters! I am taking a deep breath and counting to 10...

Didn't work. Ok, so here's another question. How is it that ancient man, (with his fantastically dirty dreads) can cross snowy mountains, lush grasslands, and the deserts of Egypt, with little food and water, and have a perfectly groomed goatee? I don't imagine they brought their mammoth bone chin-scrapers for their adventures in facial hair on the trip. And perfectly waxed chest. I always thought our ancestors were kind of hairy...silly me. And speaking of crossing the known world...it seems a bit much to assume that slave raiders would go to that much effort for like 5 people from a teeny tiny tribe waaay up in the mountains. Didn't they have to cross terror bird territory? I know there are pyramids to build and all, but really. The local tribes just seem more convenient. (I'm not even going to begin to go into the stereotypical African tribes in bamboo hats hiding in the grass.) And no one noticed that they were stealing mammoths? How did they get the mammoths past the terror birds? I guess they could have been local Egyptian mammoths, what, with the giant fur coats!

Visually, I guess they tried. I read that they spent months on the mammoth hair. And it was really pretty, all blowing in the wind. The locales were lovely too. They gave us so many sweeping shots of them that I had no choice but to notice. But don't audiences already know the trick of shooting a night scene during the day with filters? We can see the shadows, and the sun bouncing off the heads of the actors lucky enough not to be wearing a dead cat up there. And in the screening I saw, there were at least 3 instances of weird purple static...maybe I just got lucky. The performances were the only thing I can really say I liked. Steven Strait is someone to watch. The poor guy had to lose 30 lbs of muscle for the role. He did some nice work with what was, well, a mammoth poop script. And Cliff Curtis (Whale Riders, Once Were Warriors) does a fine job as "good-hearted mentor of young hero" dude. At least they got paid.

I really wanted to like this one. I didn't expect historical accuracy. I totally get that 10,000 BC isn't when the pyramids were built. I get that it's a nice round number and 2630 BC isn't a good movie title. I know it is supposed to be an epic story about love and heroes. Emmerich had something with a lot of potential here. He just really should have let someone else write it. And seriously Roland, mammoths building the pyramids? I think there's a theory about aliens building them. You do better with aliens.