10,000 B.S.

I don't enjoy bad films, but my tastes for movies has some of my closest movie-geek friends second-guessing my film critiques. I enjoyed "A Knight's Tale" and "Ice Age" (all three) and you can usually get me to see any animated movie as long as it doesn't have talking cars in it (that's right, I did NOT like "Cars"). However, once in awhile, maybe not since I was forced to watch "Cabin Boy," a movie is so bad, so horrible, that my mind obsesses over the absolute carelessness of the studio, writer and director for manufacturing such an awful piece of "art." 

I remember when the film, "10,000 BC" came out in the theaters. I even remember thinking how it probably would be cool to watch on the big screen or on IMAX. I didn't have that many expectations of the movie, but I did, in fact, expect to be entertained with over the top computer animation and cool action scenes. 2008 came and went and I never got to spend the 15 dollars to see it. Instead, I got to watch this particular piece of crap on my HD television the other night. I know I'm late to the party on this movie review. The saber tooth cat is already out of the prehistoric bag that this movie was completely horrible. I knew that when I sat down to watch it, but expected to enjoy all the ridiculousness of it, much like how I enjoy watching "Face-Off" up until the part when Nicholas Cage says, "I want to take his face...off" and then I turn off TBS and watch a re-run of South Park.

"10,000 BC' was not to be one of these movies. Before the opening title, I already decided that if I had been in a movie theater and not my own apartment, I would have thrown my blue-raspberry Icee at the screen (and if I didn't have one, then I would have gone to the concession stand and bought one). First off, I had already known that the one thing people really didn't like about the movie was how all these "cavemen" had straight, white teeth. While the movie in itself was anachronistic,  I had thought the film maker would at least attempt to make up for his lack of story, character and action with some bit of interesting history. So, I stupidly watched on.

I hated all the characters and I couldn't understand any of their names. I hated the narrator who essentially sounded like he was reading us a Dr. Seuss book, except in a much more remedial fashion. For example, the men journey on through the snow and mountains. We, as the viewer, see this, and yet the narrator feels the need to tell us this as we are seeing it (remember "Adaptation" with Nicholas Cage? When Kaufman goes to the writing seminar and Brian Cox's character says "And god help you if you use voice-over!" This was going through my mind for most of Roland Emmerich's prehistoric orgy of awfulness). Cliff Curits played Tic'Tic, although I didn't know that was his name during the film at all and kept calling him "Rabbit" (the character he played on NBC's failed show, "Trauma"). Steven Strait played D'Leh, who was on a quest to save his people and his love, the beautiful blue-eyed Evolet. This all would have been a great start to an epic journey if anything happened on the way. The action scenes were boring and the animals were laughable.

In the first fight, when D'Leh wins the white spear for killing the mammoth (a lucky accident which totally doesn't pay off when he kills a mammoth later in the film at the great pyramids--the poor beast was just running away like all the other slaves), I was rooting for the mammoth. D'Leh then falls into a hunter's trap and the rain starts to fall, (a situational rip off  from "Apocalypto") and instead of killing a monstrous sized saber tooth tiger, he saves it...and the monster cat let's him live....twice. Have you ever tried to give a cat a bath? Cats + water = disaster for anyone in its way, and I'd hate to see how a cat with two-foot fangs reacts after almost drowning. Oh wait, I did. He jumps out of the water and let's his meal go. That makes perfect sense.

The men finally get to the pyramids, which I think was supposed to be a big reveal or twist, but it totally went nowhere. So the cavemen are in Egypt now? They go from snow and mountains to jungle to desert in "many moons" and that just doesn't cut it for this viewer. I want to see a map. It's not enough that the banal D'Leh figures out how to use the stars to navigate at night, give us something else, because at this point there is 40 minutes left in the movie and I don't care to watch anymore.

Oh, the big reveal of the pyramids, that's right. And the weird, creepy witch guy with the veil. Plus, we should care about pretty blue eyes' virginity too now, because it seems as though D'Leh hasn't had the chance to have sex with the woman he's lusted after since he was ten years old, because cavemen were known for their well reserved manner and respect of women.

The end of the movie is like seeing two hippies on some nature preserve and ready to start their commune. I hate to make this joke, but there are most likely 10,000 reasons not to see this movie and why it's horrible. I know I'm not the first one to make a rant of how awful this is, but I can't help myself. I've been obsessing over it for the past 24 hours and I just had to write about it. Don't see this movie. Ever. Not even if it's for free on a 20-hour flight. You're better off sleeping.